


Condition of Release

by copperbadge



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Compulsion, Cybermen - Freeform, Depression, Dubious Consent, Grief/Mourning, History, M/M, Mild Gore, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-05
Updated: 2010-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:25:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack has studied the Cybermen for forty years, and he's damned if he'll let one take any of his people away from him without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Tomb Of The Cybermen and The Invasion, two Classic Who episodes which indicate that Cybermen have the power to control human minds. The mythology of the Cybermen is complicated and contradictory, but a remarkable constant remains their desire, their _need_ , for a human collaborator to ready the way for them.
> 
> I'm not sure how to warn for this one. There are strong themes and portrayals of mind control, including some dubcon (though of an interpersonal rather than explicitly sexual nature). If you are triggered by dubious consent or nonsexual external control, I would suggest having a trusted friend review this before reading. 
> 
> Beta thanks to Foxy, Jenny, Anya, and Spider!

  
Banner by LauraB1 on LiveJournal.

The old 8mm film-recording is full of shadows.

There is a man in one of the shadows, hidden in the dark, not through any artifice but just because the camera can't pick him up where he sits on the edge of the light. A bare expanse of table separates him from a young woman, a beautiful young woman with long smooth hair and wide eyes. Impossible to tell on black-and-white tape what colour her eyes are, but they were blue. Or maybe green -- the memory plays tricks after forty years.

She looks innocent, but she isn't. If she were, she wouldn't be there in the room of shadows, with the lamp's light turning her face and the table and the man's hands bleached white, stripped of detail on the film.

"Tell me about Toberman, Victoria," the man says. His voice isn't unkind, but it brooks no disobedience. He spins a pencil once, briefly, in his right hand, then pulls a pad of paper a little closer. It's already half-full of notes, the used pages flipped over and tucked under.

"Do I have to?" she asks wearily. "It's horrible, and I'm so tired."

"Just this," the man promises, "and then you can rest before we continue."

Sad to see her eyes brighten just before he hits the part about continuing.

"Toberman was Kaftan's servant," she says, a little defiant. She knows they won't stop until they know everything, but they've promised they'll stop once they do. "He was the first one the Cybermen got hold of."

"Did they convert him?" the man asks.

Victoria frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Did they make him like them. Metallic," he clarifies. The pencil spins again before he puts it to paper.

"No," Victoria says, twisting her fingers together, head bowed, as if this is a punishment. The debriefing is just a necessity; they did try not to hurt her. The interrogator told them physical torture would be fruitless and cruel; _fine_ , they said, _you get the truth out of her without it._ So he had. "The Cybermen -- they changed him. They made him do their bidding. It was like they controlled him with their minds. He would do...things, things they wanted him to do."

"How?" he asks.

"I don't know!"

"Did he have any implants?"

"Just one, on his arm."

The interrogator ticks a few words against the paper with his pencil -- she sees it, and knows eventually they'll come back to that implant, what size it was, what colour, what was it made of.

"Nothing else," she says, resigned. "He just...did things."

"What kinds of things?"

"He would...stop people who were threatening the Cybermen. It's awful; why can't you leave it alone?" she blurts, angrily.

"You know why I can't, Victoria," the man replies, and there is a hint of threat behind the supposedly gentle tone. "Torchwood needs to know these things. To protect ourselves if the Cybermen ever come here. Ever come back."

***

What stayed with Jack the longest, that night, wasn't blind fury or dying or even Ianto's punch that left him with a split lip for two weeks. It was the smell, after the shooting. Cordite in the air like a haze -- and blood, and just a tangy hint of Myfanwy's protein sauce. There was one pure moment of clarity when all his senses were _so sharp_ , and he recalled the weight of his gun and Ianto's cries and Gwen's hiss of breath when the metal helmet fell from the Cyberwoman's head. But the smell was the only thing that seemed to belong to reality. The rest felt like a filmstrip, or something he'd read about once.

Then he fell back into his body, back into the situation that had almost cost his team their lives and would have destroyed humanity, if he'd let it. He had three frightened agents to reassure, two bodies to dispose of, a pterodactyl who probably needed stitches, and --

And Ianto. Ianto, who had gone so still and quiet, whose anger and grief was...oddly...absent.

"I think he's going into shock," Owen said, holstering his gun. "Jack -- "

"No, I don't think so," Jack answered. A different kind of clarity was settling in, driven less by adrenaline than by knowledge of what was happening, what he was witnessing.

"Jack, he's not moving," Tosh said.

"Nobody touch him," Jack ordered. He edged forward. Ianto didn't move, didn't react. Jack crouched on the other side of Lisa's body and reached out a hand. There was a brief electrical spark when he touched Ianto's skin, but nothing more. He tipped the young man's chin up, slowly.

Ianto's eyes were fixed like a dead man's, blind and unfocused. No sign of consciousness, no rage, no sadness, no fear. When Jack pulled his hand back, Ianto stayed in the pose he'd set him in. His breathing was shallow and even, no trace of the hitching sobs of a moment before.

"This is wrong," Gwen said, her voice cracking, panic bubbling through. "There's something wrong with him."

"Yeah, well, we just shot his girlfriend," Owen answered -- biting, but with that same about-to-lose-it tremble that Gwen had. "Jack, listen, you might want to kill him but -- "

"I'm not going to kill him," Jack said softly. Ianto didn't react. Jack took one of his arms and it bent, unresisting, so he stood up and pulled and Ianto stood too. The tilt of his chin hadn't changed. He looked almost defiant, standing there, except for the dead, cold eyes staring straight through Jack at some distant inner vista. Or at nothing at all.

"Catatonia?" Gwen suggested, looking at Owen. He shook his head. "Well, what then?"

"Something a time traveller told me about, once," Jack replied, before Owen could answer. He let go of Ianto's arm and it fell to hang loosely at his side.

"What's that got to do with Ianto?" Tosh asked. She sounded calmer than the other two; curious and worried, but not verging on breakdown like Gwen and Owen. Jack turned to them.

"I'll take care of it," he said. "Go home. Get some rest. We'll clean up later."

"Jack, you can't just leave two bodies -- " Gwen started, but she stopped abruptly when Jack glanced at her.

"We can help," Tosh offered.

"It's my mess, I'll handle it," Jack retorted. "Go home. That's not a suggestion. It's an order."

The three of them telegraphed little looks back and forth, quickly. Owen seemed uncertain, but Jack could see Gwen and Tosh weren't interested in being first to obey. Finally, Owen made his own decision and turned to leave with a shrug. Gwen saw him and frowned, but she didn't hesitate much longer before she followed. Tosh, still reluctant to go, took a step back before stopping again.

"I'm taking the remote Rift monitor with me," she said.

"Good. Do that," Jack answered, turning back to Ianto.

"You'll call if you need us."

"I'll call," Jack agreed. He had no intention of needing them until they were rested, and until he'd figured out what to do about the empty shell in front of him. He didn't move again until he'd heard the pneumatic growl of the rolldoor closing after her.

First things first.

"I'm sorry," he told Ianto, as he cuffed his hands behind his back. Ianto didn't answer or resist. Jack took him by the shoulders and walked him down the hall to the atrium, then pushed him down to sit, probably very uncomfortably, on the stairs.

That done, Jack turned back to the Hub. What a godawful mess. He tucked his fingers between his lips and whistled shrilly, one of the few commands Myfanwy had learned and was willing to obey. There was a birdlike whimper from the other side of the Hub, and then a rustle of wings.

Myfanwy was not tame, not in the least, and she didn't like to be touched by anyone. Still, when he found her hiding in the shadows she let him get close enough to see that the wounds the Cyberwoman had inflicted were superficial; she even let him run his hands carefully along her beak, to be certain nothing was fractured.

"You'll be fine," he told her. She responded by trying to nip off three of his fingers. He smacked her sharply on the tip of her beak and she shrieked in indignant protest, but she also gathered herself and leapt upwards, lean muscles bunching and stretching, far enough to lift off and retreat to her nest on the upper levels.

The bodies could wait, and so could the conversion unit he'd have to dismantle, but if he was going to leave Lisa Hallett's body in the Hub for any length of time he was going to make damn sure she wasn't getting up again.

He walked back to where they'd left the bodies and crouched next to hers, trying not to look at her face. He took out his boot-knife and pried the Cyberwoman's chest-seal off. Inside was a bundle of wires right where Torchwood's research files had said they would be -- right where her heart should have been. The Cybermen kept upgrading their tech, but they didn't have the imagination to vary the basic design much. He tugged the bundle free. A little white foam oozed up between the circuits. If she hadn't been dead before, she was now.

He glanced at Ianto but Ianto was checked out, nobody home, bluescreen of death. Jack considered that the most merciful thing he could possibly do would be a bullet through the head, but if his suspicions were right then Ianto should at least be given a chance.

"Up you come," he said, pulling Ianto back to his feet and up the stairs. With the Cyberwoman permanently out, Jack unlocked the handcuffs and pushed Ianto back into the couch near his office. He went to his own desk, got a tin first-aid box from the top drawer, and took a bottle of smelling salts out of the box. Sometimes the old ways were best.

He pulled Owen's chair around and sat in front of the couch, then reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief, clearing away at least some of the grime and snot and half-dried tears on Ianto's face.

He got his first reaction when he waved the open bottle under Ianto's nose; an instant recoil, a shake of the head, and then the awful dead staring eyes finally focused on Jack's face. Emotion; confusion. Good enough to start with.

"Ianto Jones," Jack said, and Ianto blinked. "Do you know where you are?"

Another good sign; Ianto turned his head, looking around, then back confusedly at Jack.

"Do you know who I am?" Jack asked.

"Captain Jack Harkness," Ianto replied. Hard to tell if he was still in there; the flat reply could be nothing more than leftover conditioning.

"You know why you're here?" Jack asked. Another slow blink. Shit.

But then --

"No," Ianto answered, and there was real confusion and fear in his voice. "I don't -- I -- "

"It's okay, you're safe," Jack said. "Focus on me. Right here."

Ianto obediently looked at him, or at least at the finger Jack was holding up. He looked exhausted. Jack wasn't daisy-fresh himself, but he was willing to bet Ianto was much worse.

"I need you to answer some questions for me," Jack said. "Where do you work?"

"Torchwood," Ianto replied briefly.

"Torchwood One?"

"Yes -- no -- Torchwood -- Torchwood Three, in Cardiff," Ianto stammered. He looked around, then back at Jack. "Don't I?"

"Good," Jack said, ignoring the question. "Who am I, again?"

"Jack," Ianto replied, a little hush in his voice.

"What do you do at Torchwood?" Jack asked.

"General support. I get you everywhere on time," Ianto said, with almost a hint of humour in his voice. "I clean...I clean up...after you," he added, tone disappearing, flattening out, like a recitation. Like a catechism. "And I look good in a suit."

"Stay here, Ianto, right here," Jack said, wobbling his finger. Ianto nodded obediently. His eyes flicked to Jack's face, then back to Jack's hand. "Okay. Just a little more. Do you remember Owen?"

"Yes," Ianto said.

"Toshiko?"

"Yes," with a slight smile. Good.

"And Gwen? You remember Gwen?"

"Yes...why..." Ianto frowned. "What's -- I don't know why I -- "

"Nonono," Jack said hurriedly. "Here with me, remember?"

Ianto looked past his hand to his face. "Something's gone wrong, I can't -- hear -- "

"You can't hear?"

"It's gone, the -- "

"Ianto. Ianto!" Jack said, when Ianto tried to look past him. Ianto settled back again, a little, but he still seemed agitated. "Whatever's gone, it's not important, okay? It's not important right now. We'll deal with it later. We're safe here."

Ianto seemed to pull in on himself, either gathering his wits or withdrawing, Jack wasn't positive. Delicate business, this -- if Ianto went back in too far, the thin line connecting him to reality would snap. On the other hand, if he came all the way home too quickly, that could lead to a very different, much less pleasant form of madness.

"How do you feel?" Jack asked carefully.

Ianto looked baffled by the question, but he seemed to be giving it a fair try.

"Tired," he said finally. "I'm so tired, Jack."

"I know," Jack replied, relieved. "Anyone would be. So you're going to sleep, all right?"

Ianto nodded and his hands began fumbling against his thighs, as if he were feeling his pockets for his keys so he could drive home. He stopped suddenly and looked down. His hands were covered in dried blood -- some his own, some Jack's, mostly Lisa's.

Jack reached out quickly and covered the upturned palms with his own. They were still sticky.

"There's no way you're getting home tonight," he said. Ianto was staring at Jack's knuckles. "You can sleep here."

Ianto's lips curved upwards. "I can, can I?" he said, looking up at Jack slyly.

Oh, no. Oh, god, no.

"Not that way," Jack said, against the choking horror and the bile rising in his throat. For the first time it struck him just what the Cyberwoman had done -- just how much of whoever Ianto Jones actually was might have been violated by it, and what a hand he'd had in that. Not that he hadn't paid attention to Ianto, but it hadn't been the right kind. "You're going to sleep here," he said, pointing to the couch. Ianto looked down at it, considering.

"I'll get a blanket," he said, and was about to stand when Jack put a hand on his shoulder.

"No, stay there," Jack ordered. "Lie down, close your eyes."

He should take Ianto's tie off, at least, or have Ianto take it off himself, but at the moment the idea of forcing Ianto to undress at all appealed to him about as much as shooting him in the head had earlier. He felt a wave of relief when Ianto shrugged out of his coat without being asked, undid his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt, and bent to unlace his shoes. Jack took the opportunity to dart into his office and down into his little bolthole underneath, grabbing a spare military-surplus blanket from the locker at the foot of his cot. After a second's thought he picked up his own pillow from where it lay on the bed, stripped the case off it, and tucked it in with the blanket.

When he returned, Ianto was already asleep, collapsed across the couch. Jack lifted his head gently, sliding the pillow underneath it, then laid the blanket across Ianto's legs. He studied Ianto's bloody hands, fingers loose and half-curled, and after a minute's thought he fetched some alcohol wipes from the first-aid kit, cleaning the palms and each finger carefully. When he finally spread the blanket out over his shoulders, Ianto mumbled in his sleep and rolled over, curling inwards, his back to the world.

Jack watched to be sure he would stay asleep, and then went to dispose of the bodies. The logistics of getting one body to the incinerator and the second to a freezer drawer in the morgue for Owen to disassemble in the morning was something he could focus on. He could fix this, at least temporarily, and he could clean away some of the mess.

As he worked his mind naturally drifted, and after a night like tonight there weren't many places for it to go.

Ianto Jones. Ianto Jones in those sharp suits, with the delightful implication that Jack could, if he so chose, have Ianto Jones in no suit at all. Jack made a point of not fucking his employees unless they were _really_ going to be worth it, and that combined with Ianto's own flirtatious reticence had kept them both firmly at arm's length, but it wasn't as though Jack hadn't been considering it. It wasn't as though he hadn't decided that Ianto would, in fact, be really worth it, if only he could push the flirtation over into something more.

So, another week or two, and maybe they would have. As it was, Jack had a lot of subtle but not apparently unwelcome touches to answer for, and more than a little innuendo if it came to that. Enough that the Cyberwoman had conditioned Ianto to look for it, to respond to it, and to initiate it. And that meant Ianto was still responding to some form of programming ghosting around in his head.

He wondered if he might have two Cyberbeings on his hands. Clever of her, really, to give her mobile half just enough autonomy to still seem human. Hell, most of Ianto's day-to-day behaviour was probably governed by a conscious mind. Most of what they'd seen, as his colleagues, was probably really him.

Probably, he thought, as he eased the Cyberwoman's body onto the slab. Probably wasn't good enough. He'd need to know for sure, when Ianto woke, and he'd need Owen for that.

And Owen would definitely need a medical bay that didn't look like a herd of cattle had stampeded through it. Which meant cleaning up in there, and then collecting all the damaged tech to dump on Tosh's desk, and then all the blown-around paperwork for his own desk, and then a structural inspection to make sure the Hub wasn't going to fall down around their ears because of anything the Cyberwoman had done, after which it would probably be good to wash the blood off the floor.

Well. A list. How very...how very Ianto Jones of him.

***

"What happened to Toberman?" the man asks, leaning forward, pencil at the ready. His face is still just barely in shadow, but the profile of it is clear enough, if one looks closely. He can't be doing it to avoid identification; anyone listening who knew him would know who he was anyway. "Did the Cybermen kill him?"

"No!" Victoria says, indignantly, as if she's on the ill-used Toberman's side -- and perhaps she is. "He seemed to sort of...break free. Like they couldn't quite hold onto him. He was very brave," she adds, loyally.

"He broke free from their control?" The man seems truly impressed for the first time. Victoria presses her advantage.

"That's right," she insists. "He attacked the Cybercontroller. He killed him, he threw him against a machine panel and electrocuted him."

"So Toberman survived," the man infers.

Victoria seems to shrink, losing the bravado of a moment before, all the hot indignation and defence of someone who must have been, in an odd way, a friend. It's too late, though -- he's seen the emotion she's capable of, and the strength she could use to defy him if she wants. He'll use it against her if he has to, at some other time, in some other story, and they both know it.

"No," Victoria says softly. "He died. While we were escaping, someone had to close the door, you see, and Toberman -- well, the door was electrified..."

The man is impassive, or at least seems to be; his profile doesn't shift, and if he's sympathetic to her pain it's not likely it shows.

"It was a terrible way to die," Victoria murmurs.

"I know you don't believe me, Victoria," the man says, "but I am sorry." He sounds like he means it, but then he always does sound that way, on the tape, in the shadow.

"You're right. I don't believe you," Victoria replies bitterly.

"You said you escaped..." the man begins, but she brings a hand down on the table (disappearing, white hand into white table on the overexposed film) and stops him.

" _You_ said if I told you about Toberman I could rest," she insists, glaring at him, chin lifted defiantly. Victoria is small, the product of another time, when men and women were smaller. When the man rests his hand next to hers on the table, the size of it proves just what he could do to her if he wished. He is much larger than her, and what little can be seen of him is hard muscle. She looks down and seems to see the implicit threat, even if he didn't mean it, even if he wanted to calm her.

"I know I can't leave until I've told you everything," she says, voice lowering, eyes dropping like the good nineteenth-century girl she was raised as before she chose to step out of the time machine, to stay in the 20th century. Victoria the Victorian, in a frock that was all the rage in the mid-sixties. "But I'm tired, and I don't especially like to think about some of this."

"You're right," the man says, withdrawing, leaning back, not even a profile visible now. "I'm sorry, Victoria. We'll start here again tomorrow. I'll have them take you back to your room."

"And once I'm done -- "

"You can leave," the man promises her. He has no idea if it's true, but it sounds convincing. "We won't hurt you."

"Too late for that, I think, Captain Harkness," she replies, and the tape cuts out.

***

Ianto slept silently, unmoving, almost eerie in his stillness. Jack half-fancied that he would sleep until ordered to wake up. He'd slept through Jack crashing around the Hub, fixing what he could and setting aside what he couldn't. Jack's mobile was in his coat pocket, abandoned next to the sofa, and Ianto slept through that going off practically in his ear when Tosh rang later in the morning to see if she was needed. Jack called her back to ask if she'd drag Owen in, and she sighed and said yes. Perhaps he should have called Gwen, but he needed Tosh more than Gwen at the moment anyway.

What woke Ianto, Jack found, was the entry alarm going off. Perhaps it was just familiar noise, or perhaps more conditioning. It would have been useful to install a trigger like that -- some kind of alert that went off in Ianto's head when someone entered the Hub. That might be paranoia, though. The Cyberwoman's plan had depended an awful lot on luck, and Jack wasn't sure how clever she'd actually been.

"Right," Owen said, walking in ahead of Tosh and looking around at the Hub. "Looks almost livable in here again. How's he doing?"

Jack gestured to where Ianto was sitting up, yawning. Owen came up the steps cautiously, then pulled around the chair Jack had used the night before, blocking Ianto from standing.

"Coffee?" Ianto asked with a smile. Knowing what they all knew now, it was...eerie. Jack saw Tosh shudder and turn to her workstation, but she kept glancing over her shoulder even as she powered up what tech was left intact and began running diagnostics.

"No coffee-making for you this morning," Owen said briskly, taking out a penlight and shining it in Ianto's eyes. Ianto blinked, trying to avoid it. "Hold still. Follow my finger."

"I fell asleep on the sofa, I'm not mad," Ianto replied, annoyed. Owen glanced at Jack, who shrugged.

"You remember 'round three o'clock yesterday?" Owen said conversationally, moving his finger back and forth.

"I had to take the SUV for petrol," Ianto said.

"Right. Then you came back to the Hub."

Ianto nodded. "You were playing basketball."

Jack looked at Tosh, and saw his own guilty expression reflected in hers. Maybe Owen remembered Ianto coming in during the basketball game, but Jack hadn't even bothered to look him in the face on his way out the door with the others. Apparently Tosh hadn't either.

"And then?" Owen prompted. Ianto frowned.

"I called for -- I called -- because...something's missing," Ianto said suddenly. "I can't hear -- "

"Can't hear at all?" Owen asked.

"There's a sound...missing," Ianto answered. He looked frustrated.

"Well, can't have that," Owen remarked. "Medical. Give you a full scan and run some tests."

"I'm fine," Ianto said, craning his head to look around Owen. "Who trashed the Hub?"

"You might have a concussion," Owen said, ignoring him.

"Oh," Ianto replied. He let Owen pull him to his feet; he didn't seem to notice Jack and Tosh moving forward to the railing of the medical bay as he and Owen descended the stairs. He began to obediently strip off his shirt, but Owen stopped him.

"Torchwood, remember?" Owen said, with a deliberate light tone. He pulled the laser-scanner forward and was reaching out to touch-tap the projection screen on when Ianto inhaled sharply.

Jack looked from Ianto's fear-frozen face to the laser-scanner's refraction dish. In the right light, it did look very...cybernetic.

"It's just a scanner, Ianto," Tosh said. Ianto turned to look up at her. "Owen scanned me with it last week when I had that cough, remember?"

Bluescreen of death again. Ianto was still looking at her, but his expression had blanked out, and his eyes were empty once more. Jack put a hand on Tosh's arm. Her pulse under his fingers was racing. Owen didn't seem as fussed, and had already switched the scanner on.

"Jack, what am I looking for, exactly?" he asked, studying the model of Ianto's body that was rendering slowly on the projection.

"I'm not sure," Jack said. "Anything weird?"

Owen leaned in closer to the screen. "Hm. Need to check his files." He switched on a monitor and called up Ianto's medical history -- doctor's visits going back to childhood, Torchwood London's standard-required physicals, his minimal injury reports since arriving in Cardiff.

"Got a pin in his leg from a bad break, that's documented," Owen muttered. "Some standard physical irregularities -- everyone has them," he said to Jack, before Jack could even open his mouth to ask. Owen shifted Ianto's head slightly, like moving a mannequin, and the image on the projector changed to reflect it. "Aha, there we go."

"What _is_ that?" Tosh asked, squinting at the screen. There was a thin glowing line in Ianto's head. Owen ran his fingers up into the short, fine hair above Ianto's neck, revealing a glint of metal in his scalp. Jack drew his gun.

"It's not connected to anything," Owen announced. "Doesn't even penetrate the skull."

"Can you remove it?" Tosh asked.

"Yeah, should be able to..." Owen's hand moved quickly, short blunt nails hooking into the wire. Before Jack could stop him, he tugged.

The wire came away in his hand, ends glistening unpleasantly, and Ianto heaved forward, almost falling off the table. Owen struggled to support his weight and Jack ran down to help, holstering his gun and clearing the last few stairs in a leap.

"Oh, Jesus," Ianto moaned, body lurching against their hands. Owen backed off and let Jack hold him steady, one arm securely around his waist, the other trying to catch his wrists as he struggled.

"Easy," Jack said, glancing at Owen, who shrugged. "Easy, deep breaths. Don't make Owen sedate you."

Ianto was shaking, but he'd stopped fighting, at least. Eventually the tremors subsided. Jack watched over Ianto's shoulder as Owen dropped the wire carefully into a tray Tosh was holding out; Tosh disappeared, back to her desk to hopefully find out what the hell the thing was.

"She's in the basement," Ianto gasped, choking on his own breath. "You have to -- corridor twelve, at the end, you have to kill her -- "

"We did," Owen said bluntly. Jack glared at him, but Ianto stiffened and looked at him.

"You -- did -- " he stammered, looking at Jack for confirmation. Jack nodded. "She's dead?"

"Last night," Jack said. "Remember?"

Ianto straightened slowly, and Jack released his wrists. He gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white.

"You did," he said, more firm now in his conviction. "I saw that. There was a voice in my head. Then there wasn't."

Jack glanced up at the projection screen. Now he was a part of the image, a glowing network of lines, his gun a blue flare at his hip, his strap a red glow on his wrist. Ianto had a blue line in his right leg -- the pin Owen had mentioned -- and his belt-buckle was another blue splotch at his waist, but that was all.

"You're clean now," Owen told Ianto, not without sympathy. "They did a right number on you."

"It wasn't me," Ianto said to Jack, turning his head again.

"I'm getting that," Jack replied.

"I hit you," Ianto added, staring at Jack's bruised and split lip.

"I've had worse," Jack said lightly.

"Jack," Owen murmured. Jack turned to him. "Everything else checks out. Physically he's all right. A brain scan -- "

"No," Jack said. Ianto clutched his sleeve tightly. "No more digging around in anyone's brain just yet. Ianto -- Ianto listen to me," he said, as Ianto began to struggle away from them. Owen grabbed his right arm; Jack pinned his left arm across his body. "Stop! Listen to me!"

Ianto was breathing hard again, eyes darting back and forth between them, but he stopped moving.

"Nobody's going to hurt you," Jack told him, easing his grip a little. "We know what happened. You're scared, I get that. But we have to figure this out, and we can't do that if you're fighting us. Now we can sedate you -- "

"No!" Ianto tried to pull away again.

"Ianto, _stop_ ," Jack ordered. Ianto went still.

Still conditioned, then. Goddammit.

"Or we can put you in the cells until we know you're not a harm to anyone. Or," Jack said, as Ianto shook his head, "I can call Gwen and have her guard you while Tosh and Owen and I figure this out."

Ianto looked at him plaintively. "Gwen?" he asked uncertainly.

"Oh my god, he's forgotten her," Owen muttered.

"No, I know -- yes -- Gwen," Ianto said. He cast a quick, terrified look at the laser scanner. Jack leaned back a little and eased him off the table.

"Okay. Good. Let's get upstairs," he said, and let go of Ianto completely as Owen practically frogmarched him back up to the atrium and then into Jack's office. Tosh stopped Jack when he passed her desk.

"It's not a wire," she said softly. "It's a microtransmitter."

"Good to know -- "

"No, Jack, I don't think it is," she told him. Jack glanced at the office, where Owen was settling Ianto in a chair and giving him a glass of Jack's best whiskey.

"You think there might be an implant in his brain?" Jack asked.

Toshiko swallowed nervously. "No, but I think there are twenty-six other survivors," she said.

It took a second for Jack to realise what she meant, and when he did a rush of adrenaline hit his system so fast it made him dizzy.

"I want you to find them," he said. "Find all of them and get on every news report that looks even a little bit weird everywhere they are. Call UNIT -- no, don't do that, I'll call them," he said, when Tosh flinched at the mention of their name. "Just watch them. Watch them all. Check their power bills. Everything you can think of, you got that? First hint of suspicious activity, bring it to me."

She nodded, but she didn't go to work immediately; she leaned past him and glanced into his office.

"How is he?" she asked.

"I don't know," Jack answered. "Hey, first call Gwen and tell her I need her, okay?"

Tosh put in her earpiece. "On it."

"Thank you, Tosh," Jack said, mindful of the accusations -- however fabricated, however controlled by the machine -- that Ianto had leveled at him last night. "You okay?"

"Yeah, fine. Gwen, hi," Tosh said, turning away from him. "No, I'm at the Hub..."

Jack left her to it and went to his office. Owen was leaning against his desk, arms crossed; Ianto had the glass of alcohol in his hands but wasn't drinking. At least, he supposed, it was keeping Ianto's hands occupied. Which wasn't a bad idea, actually.

"Here," Jack said, picking up a pile of papers from his in-box. "Deal with this, would you?"

Ianto set the glass aside, took the papers and a pen from Jack's desk, and began looking them over. After a second he tried to start writing, but the pen was dry. He took another, tested it, and looked up at Jack with a smile on his lips.

"Top of the list," he said, pulling a notebook over, "order new biros."

Jack glanced over his head at Owen, who looked deeply creeped out.

"Go help Tosh," he said to Owen. "She'll fill you in. Send Gwen in when she gets here."

Ianto worked quietly, apparently content to be doing paperwork, neatly sifting through the documents and occasionally passing one to Jack for his signature. It was something they'd done before, when the Rift was slow, Jack working at the computer while Ianto took care of hardcopy reports, invoices, and the various memos that half a dozen other agencies thought Torchwood should be aware of. Jack had always thought of it as comfortably domestic, but now he found it troubling. Especially the idea that he had entrusted a good portion of his team's physical wellbeing to Ianto. Ianto bought their food, paid their bills, and told Jack what interagency communication was important and what wasn't.

When the entry alert finally rang, fifteen minutes later, Ianto looked up and smiled to see Gwen entering. He set down the paperwork neatly and put the pen back where he'd found it.

"Seems about time for coffee," he said, and started to stand. Jack reached across the desk and put a hand on his arm.

"Not today," he said. Ianto gave him a quizzical look, then a thoughtful one.

"No," he agreed. "I suppose not."

"Tosh said you wanted me?" Gwen asked, leaning in the doorway. She looked...wary. Worried. Jack stood and walked to the doorway.

"Jack wants you to guard me," Ianto said.

"Just let him do paperwork," Jack whispered to Gwen. "If he runs out, give him a book to read."

Gwen nodded and walked past him into the office. "Hi, sweetheart," she said, seating herself in Jack's chair. "Holding up all right?"

"Yes, thanks," Ianto said, returning to his paperwork. Jack gave her a shrug and went to talk to Tosh.

"Nothing so far," she said, when she saw him approaching. "If anyone's hiding a Cyberman -- or woman -- they're not hiding them in their homes. Checking their workplaces now but most of them don't work."

"High level of unemployment among deeply traumatised people," Owen said, a dark edge to his voice that Jack mistook at first for disdain, then realised was anger. "Can't imagine why it's hard to get or hold a job when everyone you know was killed in a fiery holocaust. Could it be the PTSD? The survivor's guilt? The missing limbs?"

"It might be a positive thing," Tosh said hesitantly. "Not for them, obviously, but Ianto...I mean, he did get a job, one you didn't even want to give him, and he kept it, because the...because it made him act like he wasn't traumatised at all. So I think maybe the people who can't...function very well, they might definitely be safe."

"Check them anyway," Jack said. "Unemployment is a good cover for having to wait on a Cyberman constantly."

"I always thought Ianto was fucking off to have a smoke," Owen said thoughtfully.

"He doesn't smoke," Jack replied, then considered it. "Does he?"

"Dunno, but it's what I'd do if I didn't mind eventual lung cancer," Owen said. "Gets you out in the air for a few minutes, gives you a reason to skive off. If he wasn't around, I assumed he was taking a break. Kept meaning to give him a pamphlet about it, actually," he said. "Never got round to it."

"Your Health And You: The Hazards Of Cyberman Mind Control," Tosh said, still staring at her screen. Owen snorted. Jack had to admit it was a little bit funny. He could always trust Tosh to bring the gallows humour. "Look, Jack, I think I've got as much information as I can. We can't really know unless we inspect every one of them individually. If the Cyberwoman managed to send any kind of signal to the others, we won't have the time. If there aren't any -- "

" -- it's a waste of time," Jack finished for her. "Got it. I think now we call UNIT. Conference room, we should all be in on the call. You up for this?"

Tosh nodded. Behind her, Gwen leaned around the office doorway.

"I'm ordering in," she announced. "Chinese okay with everyone?"

"Now's the time?" Jack asked.

"He hasn't eaten since yesterday," Gwen said pointedly. "Neither have you."

Jack thought back. It was true -- peanuts at the bar was the last time he'd had anything, right before everything went to shit. God knew when Ianto had eaten. "How do you know I haven't?"

"Ianto told me," Gwen said, biting her lip. Jack closed his eyes against the idea that Ianto was still...watching him. "Chinese?" Gwen prompted again.

"Yeah," Jack said, as Toshiko pulled a thumb drive out of her computer and Owen started up the stairs. "Don't leave him alone. Take him up with you when the delivery arrives."

Gwen gave a quick nod and went back into the office. Jack saw her picking up the phone as he passed on his way up the stairs.

In the conference room, Tosh already had a display set up and was linking the videoscreen to the UNIT secure server. Owen was sitting in his usual seat, drumming his fingers, decidedly not looking at the little wire he'd pulled out of Ianto's head where it sat in its tray near the speakerphone.

"Let me do the talking," Jack said. "I'll cue you if I need you to give information. This is probably going to be nasty. Owen, seriously, I mean it," he added.

Owen held up his hands. "I learned my lesson when you banned me last time."

"Keep it in mind," Jack said, and tapped his earpiece. "UNIT communications office."

There was a soft beep, and then a tone. After a second, a voice sounded in his ear.

"UNIT Communications, routing, how may I direct your call?"

"This is Captain Jack Harkness with Torchwood Cardiff, authorisation Juliet Alpha Two Three Three Hector," he said. "Command, please."

"Which officer?" the voice requested.

"The highest ranking one who's free," Jack said.

He detected a hint of amusement down the line as the voice said, "That would be Major General Carlson, Captain Harkness. One moment while I connect you."

"Major General," Jack said to Owen and Tosh. "Not bad for a shotgun approach."

The line clicked and a rough female voice said, "This is Carlson. Am I speaking with Torchwood?"

"Captain Harkness, Major General," Jack replied.

"H'm. What can UNIT do for Torchwood, Harkness?"

"We've discovered a security breach we need to notify UNIT about," Jack said. "I'm putting you on speaker."

"Oh, great," Carlson groaned, the last of it emerging from the speakers as Jack switched it over.

"Major General Carlson, you're on the call with my agents Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato, medic and technologist respectively," Jack said.

"What's this security breach all about?" Carlson asked. "If it's the Doctor, we have bigger fish to fry right now."

"Are you briefed on the Cybermen and the incident at Canary Wharf?" Jack asked.

"Course I am, what do you take me for?"

"My apologies, Major General," Jack said, rolling his eyes for Owen and Tosh's benefit. "Last night we discovered a Cyberman had survived. It's been neutralised, but there may be more."

"Neutralised? Do tell, Captain."

"Can you link into the secure video server? My technologist has some specs up," Jack said. "Last night, one of our agents admitted to smuggling a partially converted human into our base."

" _What?_ " Carlson demanded.

"The threat was neutralised. We have the agent under guard. Apparently he was acting under the control of the Cyberman," Jack said. "Are you seeing the video feed?"

"What _is_ that?" Carlson asked. Onscreen, a copy of the laser scan of Ianto's body was rotating endlessly, the little wire glowing brightly in his head.

Jack sighed. "My agent. The line you see is a transmitter that was implanted in his head to link him more firmly to his controller."

"Is there a reason this man hasn't been executed?" Carlson snapped.

"Aside from him being the _victim_ , you mean?" Tosh demanded. Jack gave her a warning look.

"Doctor Harper removed the wire, and the agent in question is under guard," he repeated, before Carlson could object. "The situation is secure."

"You said there might be more of them. That hardly sounds secure, Harkness."

Jack nodded at Tosh, who switched the display over to a map of the UK.

"Our agent was a survivor of the Battle of Canary Wharf," Jack said. "We believe that during the battle he was implanted with the transmitter. Under orders from the Cyberman, he brought it and the conversion unit here and arranged for repairs to be made to its technology. We're concerned some of the other survivors may be in similar situations."

"Why wasn't this caught immediately?" Carlson asked.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "I was going to ask you the same question, Major General. UNIT should have processed the survivors as they were released."

"Not our job, Harkness. This was Torchwood's mess. If I recall correctly you made it very clear that the remains of Canary Wharf were Torchwood's property and responsibility."

Jack leaned on the conference table. "So who the hell took care of these people, then?"

He could hear the clack of a keyboard as she looked up UNIT's records of the event. "According to these reports, UNIT gave on-site medical attention and post-event psychological counseling if the survivors wanted it. We assumed, given they were Torchwood employees, Torchwood would track them. I see they were given disability pensions by Torchwood; paid them off, did you?"

"Major General, what I did to the survivors isn't material," Jack said.

"I think it is, Harkness. They were your responsibility."

"They're people, you know," Owen snapped. "They're not resources you just get to dump."

"That must be Dr. Harper," Carlson retorted. "Bleeding hearts. I don't hear much evidence Torchwood thought that way back before they were a security risk."

"O-kay," Jack said, interrupting what was sure to be a stream of profanity from Owen. "We can blame each other all we want for twenty-seven people slipping through the cracks, but the point is we now have twenty-six we need to investigate. I have three other agents and one very sick man to deal with, Carlson, I need UNIT's support for this."

"You want me to send my troops out to hunt Cybermen because you might have missed them?" Carlson asked. "Have you seen what Cybermen do?"

"Yes, I have," Jack said sharply. "And if I don't have help tracking these people down, so will you."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"I'm not taking the blame for this," Carlson said.

"Blame whoever you want, I don't care," Jack replied. "Just get people on it. We're uploading the data we've gathered now."

"Receiving," Carlson said shortly.

"I want to be kept in the loop."

"I'm sure you do, Captain Harkness. I note there are two survivors in your area. Do you think you could handle those two on your own?"

Jack suppressed the urge to snarl. "We'll take care of them."

"You'd damn well better. I'm assigning you a liaison, because I don't want to talk to you," Carlson informed him. "He'll be in touch within the hour. Great work, Harkness," she added sarcastically, and there was a click as she hung up.

" _Wow_ ," Owen said.

"I really hate UNIT," Tosh added.

"Your loyalty is noted and appreciated," Jack sighed. "Okay. Tosh, find out if there's a way to detect Cyberman technology without getting overly intrusive. Owen, can you rig a portable scanner?"

"Probably," Owen said. "Can't we just check their heads?"

"I'd like to be a little more thorough," Jack said. "Come back to me in an hour with everything you have -- Tosh, that includes dossiers on our two locals."

Tosh collected the transmitter and her drive and left with what looked like as much hurry as she could manage without actually running. Owen lingered, looking pensively at the speakerphone.

"Objections?" Jack asked.

"She had a point," Owen said. "Why weren't we tracking them?"

Jack looked down at his hands. "Because I'm not as good as I should be. I didn't want to -- I knew someone who -- look, I didn't want to think about it, okay? Not more than I had to."

"Why'd you hire Ianto, then?" Owen asked.

Jack gave a bitter bark of laughter. "Because he was hot."

"I suppose I should be flattered you hired me for my brains," Owen said. "Jack, we can't just make Gwen babysit him forever. He needs neurological scans, a psych workup, probably some deprogramming. I'm your man for the neuro end, but I wouldn't know how to begin finding out whether he's actually dangerous. Until we do, he needs to be under supervision or in the cells. That puts us at least one man down, two if we mind him in shifts. And, frankly, locking him in the cells is a bit like putting someone in jail for getting the shit kicked out of them."

"I know," Jack ground out.

"So what do we do?"

"We protect the public. We get any other Cybermen that are out there, and then we worry about Ianto. That's the job," Jack said.

"Very UNIT," Owen remarked, and left Jack alone in the conference room.

Jack took a few minutes to get his thoughts together -- to pack the memories of Rose carefully away, to likewise partition off his worry for Ianto and his anger at UNIT and himself -- and then went downstairs. Owen and Tosh were hard at work, and Ianto was still doing paperwork while Gwen played Solitaire on his computer. It looked like Ianto might be doing Gwen's paperwork, actually. Jack cynically gave her points for imagination.

"I'm going to the archives," he announced. "I'll be back up soon."

"Did you need something?" Ianto asked, looking up from his paperwork, and then he --

It was an odd process, actually; Jack saw his face go blank, saw the bluescreen _start_ , but then Ianto winced and shook his head and it cleared.

"No, of course not," Ianto murmured. Jack saw, in that second, real fear and grief -- and then it was gone as he turned back to the paperwork.

That was programming. Deep programming, and something else...but Ianto Jones, whoever he really was, was under there somewhere. Which made life harder, because if he was just a collection of macros then Jack could lock him up or execute him. But if he was really there, frightened and in pain, Jack was going to have to hurt him more before they could dig him out.

He lingered, watching as Gwen reached across to rub Ianto's arm gently. The young man looked up, smiled quickly -- automatically, almost mechanically -- and went back to his work. Jack sighed and took himself off to the archives.


	2. Chapter 2

The archives were Ianto's domain, and had been Suzie's before him and David's before her, but Jack had been here since before the archives were moved in -- he'd supervised the transfer himself when the Hub was converted from underground station to base. Some years, he'd been the archivist; for a decade after the second war, when he'd been traumatised without really realising it, they'd put him in the archives because he couldn't stand to be out in the open and unprotected. He'd worked past it, slowly, but in the time between his medical discharge in '44 ("battle fatigue"; it was true that he was so tired) and his first return to the field in '53, he'd spent years underground. He'd slept here, eaten here, worked only here. He knew every twist and turn intimately, and he knew where the locked and hidden doors were.

Sometime in that hazy, dimly-lit decade, he'd realised that very few people in Torchwood knew his secret anymore, and if he could lock away the records of just how long he'd been alive, the secret could be kept. So he'd opened the Secure Archive, and every few years any records with his name attached were "sterilised", his name removed, and the originals locked in the Secure Archive. That was where the Cyberman files were, except for the ones concerning Torchwood One. And he was looking for something much older than those.

He unlocked the door with his strap and stepped inside -- oh, he had been tidy once, obsessed with order down here in the dark. If he could just put everything in order, file it all away in its rightful place, then the world wouldn't be dangerous and he could go out in the air again.

He'd worked through that, too.

Here they were, the carefully preserved tapes and film reels and files. He should have put them on DVD years ago; the ghost of the pale, frightened man in the room agreed with him. Well, no time like the present, and he needed the records anyway. He took an empty storage box from under the workbench and began to fill it with records. The Hartigan Excavation site reports, the Waterfield reels, the autopsy file on Vaughn, the Invasion Debriefing, the Van Statten authentication, the Snowcap Base black box recordings. Most of it wouldn't be relevant; only the Waterfield reels touched on this aspect, as far as Jack could recall, but his memory sometimes failed him. He could use Tosh's converter rig to put them on DVD and review them on the fly.

He paused to think for a moment, and then added the Carstairs tapes to the box as well. Not relevant, perhaps; no Cybermen on those tapes. But he recalled something about mind control on them, something about a programming machine, that might make them valuable.

When he was done, he locked up behind himself and carried the box up to the general archive work area, covered in a mixture of Tosh's broken tech, Ianto's half-finished work, and a variety of his own personal repair projects. He loaded the reels and tapes into the converter rig, programmed it to upload to his secure server, burn to DVD, and incinerate, and went upstairs again. He paused briefly on the archive threshold, the ghost of his past peering terrified into the open Hub, then continued up and out, into the atrium. 

All seemed quiet; Tosh was clacking away at her keyboard with a box of take-away sitting next to her. She looked up and gave him a smile when she saw him.

"Our liaison called," she said, tipping her head at Jack's office. "Gwen took it. UNIT's dispatching now, they'll report in as each survivor is cleared. Here's our two," she added, swinging the monitor over so that he could see. "One's in Newport, but the other's in Dover -- that's a bit more than a day trip, unless we leave it for tomorrow. Even then..."

"Yeah," Jack said, studying the map. Most of the other survivors were in the north. Two in Scotland, three in Ireland, Ianto and one other in Wales, one in Dover and two in Norfolk, five on the northern border, and _thirteen_ scattered around Yorkshire. He wondered what it was about Yorkshire.

"Owen," Jack called.

"Yeah, fuck," Owen called back.

"Lose a finger?" Jack asked. A hand shot up from medical, with two upraised fingers still very much attached. "What's the problem?"

"Nothing, just found something else she wrecked," Owen called. "What is it?"

"You got a scanner for me?"

"I will have, in about twenty minutes."

"How hard is it to operate?"

Owen's face and arms appeared over the ledge of the medical bay. "Not hard. Why?"

"I'm taking Tosh and Gwen with me to Newport. We'll drop Gwen back here and go on to Dover from there. You and Gwen can watch Ianto in shifts."

"Suits me, I'm not eager to see another Cyberman in a hurry," Owen said, and disappeared again.

"We'll drive to Dover tonight, investigate if we get there before dark, otherwise hit it in the morning," Jack told Tosh. "Up for this?"

"Of course," she said with a smile. "Have I got time to pack an overnight bag?"

"Yeah, do it," Jack said. "I'll pick you up."

He walked over to his office, where Ianto and Gwen were eating Chinese from take-away boxes, Ianto as if he'd never seen food before, Gwen a little more daintily. Ianto had a napkin tucked in his shirt. The same shirt he'd been wearing for two days, the one smeared with grime, the one with blood on the cuffs. Jack sighed.

"Gwen, take a minute," he said, and jerked his head at the atrium. Gwen got up, took her food with her, and squeezed his hand as she walked out. Jack settled in at his desk and regarded Ianto, who set his food aside with a regretful look and pulled the napkin gingerly out of his shirt.

"I think," Jack said, "that most of what you're saying is conditioning. I can see you in there, and we're going to pull you out. For now, don't worry about replying, just listen and try to shake off the instinct, and when we're done I'll make sure you understand. Okay?"

Ianto nodded.

"We have to make sure this didn't happen to anyone else. Tosh and I are going to be gone overnight. I'm leaving you here with Owen and Gwen, and I'm going to authorise Owen to try and find out -- why this is happening, what your patterns are."

Again that moment -- the brief blankness, and the flash of real emotion before Ianto composed his face again.

"He's my second when I'm gone, so you need to do what he says. If he hurts you I want you to tell him, otherwise he'll just keep pushing and -- " Jack paused. Inspiration struck. "And you'll get _caught_. You don't want that. So do what he says and tell him if he's hurting you. Gwen'll be here to make sure you're okay. When I get back we'll fix it. Until then, you stay in the Hub, and Owen and Gwen will watch you in shifts. You can sleep in the cells, but you don't have to stay there during the day if you don't want to. You can clean or read, but I'm restricting your database access. You can go out if someone goes with you." Jack rested his hands flat on the table. "You understand me? Do you really understand?"

"Yes, Jack," Ianto said, and it was -- obedient, yes, but there was also a hint of emotion in his voice that Jack took for truth.

"Good. Give Gwen your keys, she'll bring you some clothes and anything else you want from your place."

Ianto took his keys out of his pocket and went to find Gwen. Jack watched him go, pensive, then went to tell Owen what to do while he and Tosh were away.

***

By the time they'd wrestled Owen's "portable" scanner into the SUV, Jack had managed a few mouthfuls of food and Tosh had called to say she was ready to go. The UNIT liaison, Corporal someone, had also called to say the first survivor they'd investigated was clean. Ianto had hovered around the SUV while Jack and Gwen closed the boot and got ready to go, looking a little forlorn that he couldn't help. As Gwen pulled the SUV out of its parking space in the secure garage, Jack watched Owen take him by the arm and pull him back into the Hub. 

They picked up Tosh and made good time to Newport, while Jack sat in the backseat with his headphones in and reviewed the data he'd pulled out of storage. It was, legitimately, horrible stuff; they had worse individual reports on record, but the Cybermen were like the Daleks -- they just kept coming back, and their ability to time-travel meant you could never be fully sure you were rid of them. They seemed to like to play games, too, for all their talk of straightforward unemotional rationality. Cybermen never staged a frontal assault; they snuck in, used human agents, used human technology, appealed to human fear and greed to get what they wanted. Only then did the slaughter start.

There were more than twenty-seven survivors of Canary Wharf; those were only the ones who had actually been there that day, and didn't include a dozen or so others who had called in sick or weren't in the building when disaster struck. Those plus the survivors, when compared with the total roster of building staff and the known dead, still left a little over 300 "missing." Among them, Rose Tyler, who had been a "visiting guest" that day. The best Jack could hope for was that she had died quickly.

In the end, Newport turned out to be a wash. Their local wasn't even alive anymore; she'd killed herself months ago, and her husband had just kept collecting the pension without telling anyone. He looked terrified when they turned up on his doorstep, but Jack didn't have the energy to be angry. He lied, said something official-sounding about the pension being converted to a legacy payment for her two kids until they were eighteen, and had Gwen and Tosh do a sweep of the husband, his kids, the house, and the garden to make sure there was no trace of a Cyberman anywhere nearby.

They were all silent on the way back to Cardiff, Gwen staring out the window, Tosh typing a report in the back seat, Jack focusing on the road and silently cursing, not for the first time, the Cybermen and Yvonne Hartman and maybe the Doctor too, a little, though he felt traitorous doing it. He was nearly certain the Doctor was still alive; Jack knew Time Lords didn't stay down as easily as humans did.

They left Gwen at Ianto's place, with the assurance she'd get a cab back to the Hub, and turned east towards the river bridge, England, and the chalk-riddled coast where Dover lay. Crossing over into England seemed to break a wall in Tosh; they weren't a mile past the Severn when she spoke.

"Jack," she said hesitantly.

"Yeah?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the road.

"I spoke with Owen earlier..." she hesitated, then continued. "He said you told him...well, he said he thought maybe you lost someone at Canary Wharf."

"Yeah," Jack said, fingers tightening slightly on the wheel.

"You never told us. When it happened. I know you were angry, but nobody knew," she said. "That part, I mean."

"It wasn't relevant," Jack said, then relented. "Maybe it was. I didn't want to talk about it."

"Do you now?"

"No," he said, trying to ease the harshness of it. He wasn't angry at Tosh. It wasn't her fault. "Not -- right now."

"If you did -- "

"I know," he interrupted, and gave her a quick glance. "Thank you, Tosh."

She nodded. "Worried about Ianto?"

"Worried about a lot of things."

Jack measured that drive by the UNIT reports that Tosh received; they were halfway to London when the first survivor was cleared, two-thirds when the second came in clean, just past it when the report came in that one of the Irish survivors had been wired, and had killed two UNIT soldiers before she, and the Cyberman she'd been sheltering, were killed. Jack banged his fist on the steering wheel angrily, but he drove on.

"Maybe that was the only one," Tosh said hopefully. "After all, the odds have got to be enormous against there being even one, let alone more-than."

"Not that enormous," Jack said. "You can't factor for bullshit luck and Cyberman ingenuity. Well, maybe _you_ could," he allowed, and Tosh gave him a small, pleased smile. "We won't make it to Dover before dark. I'm not going hunting in the dark. We'll find a place to stay, get some dinner, go out first thing tomorrow."

"By then we should know more about how UNIT is getting on," Tosh said thoughtfully. "Might help us be better prepared."

"Good. That's a plan," Jack said, and they were quiet the rest of the way to Dover. When they arrived, Jack left Tosh to check them into a guest house near their target, and took a little time to wander around downtown, with his best charm turned on, asking about anything strange or unusual that might have been happening in the area. He got a few phone numbers (unasked-for, if not unwelcome) but no news he could make use of. He was glad to give up the pretense for a while and meet Tosh for dinner in a restaurant that looked out on the water. The waiter seemed to think they were a couple and smiled when he brought them their food -- though he looked perplexed when Tosh asked for wine and Jack just wanted cold water, no ice. They didn't talk much at first, though she didn't seem uncomfortable with it; they were both tired.

Sometimes it was so hard.

"Her name was Rose Tyler," he said quietly, after he'd eaten enough to take the edge off his hunger. "The woman who died in Canary Wharf."

Tosh looked at him, her face curious, but he could see she wouldn't actually ask what she wanted to.

"We weren't lovers," he added, and saw her nod. "I wanted -- I could have asked, I just never did."

"That doesn't sound like you," Tosh said, then put a hand to her mouth. "I don't mean -- "

Jack waved it off. "Well, I did once, before I really knew her." He smiled. One dance, on the hull of a spaceship high above London, but then she'd just been a pretty girl he wanted to con. After, she and the Doctor had both been too precious to him.

"Did she work for Torchwood, then?" Tosh asked.

No." Jack shook his head. "She wouldn't have, not for them. I don't know why she was there that day at all. I doubt she knew. And she died. End of story."

"I'm sorry, Jack," Tosh said.

"Me too," Jack said. Then he shrugged. "It doesn't matter, it's over, and we have to make sure it doesn't happen again."

That evening there were two more UNIT reports, both clears, and Jack checked in on Owen and Gwen; by nine, Ianto was already asleep in the cells, and Jack watched him over a CCTV feed to his laptop for a few minutes before switching it off. He was half-tempted to leave Tosh at the guest house and go investigate for himself -- after all, he couldn't die, and there was a humming urgency in him to find these things and destroy them. They'd already taken too much, and god knew if he'd be able to get Ianto back.

But he didn't go, because he was angry and not stupid. He and Tosh had better odds of finding and killing it together than he would on his own. And he didn't actually _enjoy_ dying.

***

In the morning there were ten more UNIT reports, still all clear, and he could tell that Tosh took heart from it. Jack wasn't letting his guard down, but he was -- pleased, anyway, that it looked like they were well on their way to confirming the survivors were only that: survivors. When they were done here he'd do something, set up some kind of network or check system or something. Gwen would know what to do.

They didn't eat breakfast, just took coffee from the dining room in the guest house and saddled up. Micah Donovan lived nearby in a pretty little bungalow with a large back garden, just the kind of place someone could find some peace in. And when he answered the door, he looked confident, even cheerful.

"Can I help you?" he asked, drying his hands as if he'd just been doing the breakfast dishes. "Car broke down?"

"Mr. Donovan," Jack said. "Captain Jack Harkness, this is Toshiko Sato. We're from Torchwood."

The transformation was immediate and complete -- in the space of a few seconds Donovan's face turned pale, his hands dropped to his sides, and he sagged against the door as if he couldn't stand up on his own. Tosh put out a hand to help, but Jack grabbed her wrist; if Donovan was faking to get them to drop their guard, then he was a dangerous man.

"Thank God," he whispered. Jack's senses kicked into high gear. Everything became very bright and sharp. "Are you here to take it away?"

Jack saw Tosh backing up out of the corner of his eye.

"Take what away?" he asked. Donovan turned -- and Jack saw a slight glint of metal in his scalp. He reached for his gun.

"It's in the garden shed," the man mumbled, turning back to them. "Please take it away. Please."

"Why don't you show us?" Jack said, trying to keep his voice neutral. Donovan stepped forward -- Jack wasn't even aware he'd pulled his gun until he saw it aimed between the man's eyes. Donovan froze, and Jack stepped to one side.

He led them down the steps -- Jack keeping the gun on him, grateful for the empty early-morning streets, no witnesses -- and through a gate into the back garden. There was a rundown-looking shed at the bottom of the garden, with three huge padlocks on the door. Donovan stopped in front of it, trembling.

Jack sniffed the air -- there was a rotten-sweet smell, like old garbage, and the closer they got to the shed the stronger it was.

"I won't go in there," Donovan said. "You can't make me. You can kill me before I go in there."

Jack took a pair of cuffs off his belt and tossed them to Tosh, who carefully bound Donovan's hands behind his back before searching his pockets. A ring of keys: house-key, car-key...and three small gold keys.

Jack took them from her and opened the locks carefully -- this close, the smell was almost overwhelming. With each snap of the tumblers, Donovan whimpered.

"It's not my fault," he said, as the last lock fell away. He was shaking, trying to hide behind Tosh. "I swear it's not my fault, it made me do it."

Jack pushed him up against the fence with one hand on his chest, then down to the ground. "Stay there."

Donovan nodded. Tosh already had her gun out.

"On three," he told her softly. She stepped to the far side of the door. "One, two -- "

The door went in easily with a single kick, tumbling off its hinges, taking half the frame with it. Their guns were up and aimed inside before they could even properly see. Even when the dust had settled it was too dark -- the single window was papered over with brown paper, and the light from outside barely fell a foot inside the doorway. The stench, unbound now, washed over them like an almost physical thing.

Jack saw a lightbulb swinging wildly on a cord from the ceiling; gun still ready, he stepped inside, holding his breath, and pulled the little chain.

Light flooded the room, strobing a little as the bulb swung with the force of his pull. he heard Tosh behind him ask "What -- ?" and then he heard her gag and stumble backwards, throwing up her coffee and whatever was left of last night's dinner. He put one arm over his mouth and nose, letting his gun fall to his side.

Most of the shed was taken up with a cyberconversion unit and a handful of life-support machines similar to the ones he'd seen in the Cyberwoman's little chamber at Torchwood. None of them were powered up. Cradled in the centre of the unit were -- limbs, yes, metal limbs and metal structures, with gaps here and there where skin should have been. They were slimed over with fluid, yellow-red-brown. Bones showed through in places; maggots wormed their way around what had once been a face, and the place was full of flies. The fresh breeze from the doorway changed the air pressure in the room; he watched as one of the arm units lost the last of its decaying muscle, the metal and rot and bone clattering to the floor with a wet splat, bone rattling against metal. There was a buzzing whine as one of the flies zipped past his ear, out into the open air.

He backed out slowly, wishing he could close the door behind him.

Tosh was wiping her mouth, drawing deep breaths, hands shaking. Donovan was curled in a ball against the fence, rocking back and forth, and there was a very, very dead Cyberman in the garden shed.

"It was evil," Donovan moaned. "I had to do it."

Jack crouched next to him, reached around to the back of his head, and pulled the wire out without ceremony or warning. Unlike with Ianto, there was no significant change. The man was weeping, clearly terrified of what he'd done.

"It's all right," Jack said softly, putting the wire in his pocket. "It's okay. You did the right thing. Shh, it's fine."

"It screamed," Donovan wailed, pressing his face into Jack's shoulder. Jack fumbled with the handcuffs, unlocking them, and Donovan clutched his coat. "It screamed forever in my _head_ \-- "

Jack helped him to his feet, held him while he wept into his coat. This was -- better, actually, than Ianto's eerie calm. This was genuine trauma and emotion. Micah Donovan, for whatever reason, had resisted control long enough to kill the monster in his garden shed. And then, presumably, had locked it up tightly so he never had to see it again. Jack didn't blame him.

"It's fine," he said, stroking Donovan's hair, trying to soothe him. "You're safe. You did the right thing. We'll destroy it, okay? We'll make sure we get everything. You're safe."

"Thank you," Donovan mumbled into his chest. "Thank you, oh, thank you..."

Jack looked over his head at Tosh, who seemed to have recovered; she was already on the phone to someone, maybe UNIT for cleanup or maybe the Hub to let them know. He had no idea how he and Tosh alone were going to get a rotting robotic corpse and a cyberconversion unit out of here, but they'd find a way.

"Micah," Jack said gently, when the worst of it seemed to have subsided. "Toshiko's going to take you inside and make you a cuppa, okay? You can tell her about it while I take care of it."

"All of it," Donovan said. "Promise me."

"I promise," Jack said, as Tosh took his arm. "Go with Tosh now."

"Come on, Mr. Donovan," Tosh coaxed. He let go of Jack's coat slowly. Tosh leaned up and whispered in Jack's ear, "Napalm in the boot."

Right. He'd forgotten they kept a box of acid in the boot of the SUV. Tosh and Owen called it Napalm because you had to set it on fire to get it to work, but if he sprayed the shed with it, it'd eat the entire thing down to the floorboards and wouldn't stop until the soil under that was sterile. Thus satisfying both his own thoroughness and Donovan's lingering terror. It wouldn't even smoke; no need to alarm the neighbours.

Thirty minutes later, smelling faintly of a chemistry lab, Jack walked into the kitchen and found a wan-looking Donovan eating a scone while Tosh looked on and sipped tea.

"Feeling better?" he asked, and the man nodded.

"I'm sorry, I really am -- most of the time I'm all right," he said. "Oh, look, I've got snot on your lovely coat -- "

"It's had worse," Jack said, sitting down. Tosh pushed a cup of lukewarm tea at him.

"Mr. Donovan gave me a full report," Tosh said. "I'll write it up later."

Jack nodded. "The Cyberman's gone. Scorched earth, there's nothing left. Had to take out the shed too, though. Sorry about that."

"Thank you," Donovan said, looking down at his cup. "I can't thank you enough."

"We'd like to help, any way we can..." Jack tried to figure out what he could even offer this poor bastard. "I have...medication that could make you forget this. All of it. Everything back before Torchwood."

Donovan shook his head. "I am all right, really," he said. "It's been months since it...stopped screaming. I see a therapist, you know. I mean I don't tell him about it, it's all -- I use metaphors, but it helps." He glanced up at Jack again. "If it's all the same, I'd really rather Torchwood just left me in peace."

"Do you have anyone nearby who can check up on you?" Jack asked. "Family...?"

"I'm not suicidal. I swear. I'll probably sleep like a baby tonight," Donovan said. He caught Jack's sceptical look. "I -- my girlfriend could stay over for a few days. She'd like that. She keeps wanting to move in, but not with that -- " he shuddered. "Not with the thing in the garden."

"If I were you," Tosh said gently, touching his arm, "I'd have her come over and help you plant some flowers there. You could build a planter frame and fill it up."

"Yes, yes, thank you," Donovan said. "That's a very good idea. I'll -- I'll tell her it burnt down. That's true, isn't it?"

"True enough," Jack agreed. "Here's my card," he added, offering him a card from his pocket. "If you change your mind, call me."

"That's kind of you," Donovan told him, tucking the card in his shirt pocket. "I really don't think I will."

Jack jerked his head at the door. "We'll be on our way."

"Thank you again," Donovan said, shaking his hand. "You don't know what this means to me."

"I'm finding out," Jack said grimly, and left Donovan to his pretty house and his nice garden and the patch of sterile soil where a dead Cyberman used to be.

They stayed in Dover only long enough to check out; Jack got breakfast on the road, but Tosh said she didn't feel much like eating. She watched him, though, as he sped down the M20, steering with one hand and eating a disgusting breakfast sandwich with the other.

"That was probably the most horrible thing I've ever seen," she said finally.

"It's in my top ten," he allowed, casting a sidelong look at her.

"Sorry I freaked out."

"It happens," he said. "After the last two days, anyone would."

"You didn't."

"I'm the boss. I'm not allowed to," he said. She smiled a little. "You know what I want more than anything right now?"

"What?" she asked.

"A drink. I want a huge glass of scotch."

"You never drink," Tosh said, obviously shocked.

"I'm on the job," Jack told her. "When this is over, next time the Rift is quiet, I'm going to take some time off and have my nice big drink and a three-hour nervous breakdown. I might puke."

Tosh laughed a little. "Is that how you do it? This job?"

"You know me by now."

"When you take your sick days, that's what you do?" Tosh asked.

"Sometimes. Sometimes I go out and get laid. Puking optional." He grinned at her. "We did a good job this morning, Tosh. Hold onto that."

"Do you think he'll be all right?"

"He seemed like he was working it out. 'All right' is relative. Something bad happened, but he got through it. We all do. That was good, the thing about planting stuff. I bet if you come back next year he'll be growing zucchini or something in it."

"He said he didn't know who it was. Not like Ianto -- he didn't know who the Cyberman was. So maybe...if it hadn't been Ianto's girlfriend..." Tosh looked out the window. "Maybe he would have killed her if he didn't love her."

"Ianto's bad luck," Jack said, crumpling the sandwich wrapper in one hand and tossing it into the paper bag it had come in. "We'll fix it, Tosh."

"Do you think so?"

Jack opened his mouth to say what he was thinking -- _one way or another_ \-- but he found he didn't want Tosh to know that if they couldn't help Ianto, executing him might still be on the table.

"We'll do our best," he said instead.

***

There is no video for this recording; it was on a reel-to-reel tape machine. Even on a DVD audio transcription, parts of it show the wear of age. They crackle and fuzz, or a word is dropped, or there's a spark of noise as someone accidentally gets too near the microphone. Jack remembers understanding more, back when his ear was better trained to decipher the static.

"Where did we leave off yesterday, Lieutenant?" Jack's voice says. He pronounces it the British way, _lef-tenant_ , and he sounds cheerful, or at least not dangerous. Lieutenant Carstairs has been most cooperative in answering the questions of Captain Jack Harkness. "Can you recount it for me?"

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Carstairs replies. One could wish for a video-recording; Carstairs had been a handsome man who carried himself well. "During most of the year 1917 soldiers were transported without our knowledge to another location -- "

"Another planet?"

"I think so, sir, yes. We were transported without our knowledge to another -- planet, if you like, where we were conditioned to believe we were still in the war. We continued regular wartime activity under the command of General Smythe. That's S-M-Y-T-H-E."

"Noted."

"I began to feel uncertain about the General's behaviour when he attempted to court-martial three travelers found in the trenches."

"This is..." a rustle of paper, though Jack has memorised the names, "An unnamed Doctor, traveling under the alias John Smith; a young woman, Zoe Heriot; a young man suspected to be a deserter from a Scots regiment, James McCrimmond, no rank given."

"That's right, sir."

"Go on."

"Well, eventually Lady Jennifer and I -- Lady Jennifer Buckingham, she was in the Women's Reserve -- decided we'd rather throw in our lot with the Doctor, due to this and that, I've told you all that, sir. We came to see we weren't on Earth, and it turned out General Smythe wasn't even human. They'd been using these machines to make us obey them, only the machines didn't work on everyone."

"That's what I'd like to talk about today," Jack's voice says. "The machines, and how you broke free from their control."

"I don't mind talking about that, sir. Only...you do believe me, sir, don't you? I'm not mad, you know."

"Lieutenant," Jack says, "I'm probably one of the only people on Earth who does."

***

When they returned to the Hub, they found Owen standing in front of Tosh's workstation, tapping out commands on a tablet that were being mirrored on the largest of her screens, modeling something that looked like an upside-down tree. A sort of mutant upside-down tree.

"Where's Ianto?" Jack asked, and Owen rolled his eyes.

"Morgue, with Gwen," he said, gesturing with the stylus towards what had once been the roundhouse for the trains that serviced the Hub, and was now cold-storage for the honoured dead. Jack left Tosh to find out what Owen was doing and walked down the stairs, across the fountain pool, footsteps ringing loud on the metal. The Hub seemed quieter, lately, than it used to. Maybe it was just him.

Ianto and Gwen were sitting side-by-side, backs against the wall, or rather backs against the doors to the freezer boxes where the dead were kept. Ianto's head was about a foot and a half below the door to Lisa's drawer.

"You're back!" Gwen said, scrambling to her feet. Ianto looked up at him, all hooded eyes and smooth young face. He was out of uniform, such as it had been; he had on a ratty pair of jeans and a pristine pair of trainers, and a too-big rugby shirt that looked like it probably actually belonged to Gwen's boyfriend. When Gwen reached down, he took her hand and let her help him to his feet, then shoved both hands in his pockets.

"Find anything?" Gwen asked. Jack cut his eyes to Ianto, warningly. "Right. Team briefing, I expect."

"Yeah. We took care of it, nothing urgent," Jack said. "Fill you in later."

"But not me," Ianto said softly -- the first time he'd spoken when he wasn't either being asked a question or threatened, Jack thought. He looked at the younger man, curious, and Ianto ducked his head.

"Not yet. How's it going here?" Jack asked neutrally.

"Rift's quiet," Gwen said. "Owen and Ianto are making headway. Aren't you, sweetheart?" she asked Ianto, who nodded. "You should talk to Owen, though."

"It's my next stop," Jack assured her. "Uh...so, cold storage...?"

"I asked," Ianto said, in the same quiet, numb tone as before. "Owen didn't need me. I wanted to sit with her."

Jack looked at Gwen, who shrugged. "I didn't see the harm."

"OI!" Owen yelled, voice echoing down the walls to them. "READY FOR YOU, JACK!"

"Sweeter words," Jack said, without even thinking. Gwen bit down on a giggle. Even Ianto smiled distantly. "COMING UP!" he yelled back at Owen. He noticed Gwen took Ianto's elbow, making sure he walked with them, as they emerged into the atrium.

"I have," Owen announced, descending the half-flight from Tosh's desk to join them, "a theory." He swung a flash-drive around his finger on a lanyard, looking pleased with himself. "Conference room?"

Jack gestured for him to lead the way. Gwen left Ianto standing there and followed him up; Tosh was already setting the room up for the presentation Owen had apparently prepared. Jack turned to Ianto.

"You wanna hear this?" he asked. It was like watching a slow computer take commands; the blankness drifted across Ianto's face but was gone again in a second or two.

"May as well," he said. Jack pressed a hand between his shoulders, gently, pushing him towards the spiral staircase.

Owen's mutant upside-down tree turned out to be a map of Ianto's brain, or anyway of his thought processes. Tosh was, as with everything mathematic and technological, professionally interested; Gwen studied it with an air of only partial understanding. Ianto looked hard at the little structure, brow furrowing, eyes narrowing, as if he could force himself to comprehend.

"So the human mind," Owen opened officiously, "is a fucking mess."

Jack raised his eyebrows.

"I mean, you know, instincts and impulses and learned behaviour, emotional influences, rational influences, it's all kind of bunched up," Owen continued. His hands scrunched an imaginary brain together out of the air. "This is why psychotherapy is a lucrative profession."

"Owen, are we approaching a point?" Jack asked.

"Our minds don't look like this," Owen said, gesturing at the upside-down tree. "'Cept, Ianto's does. It's been restructured. I mean, this is, you know, simplified, but. Not that much. So you have input -- seeing something, hearing something, you're asked a question," Owen drew his finger down from a box labeled INPUT to one labeled DECISION. "It hits a decision node, right, and the input goes one of three places. Either it's something the rational, conscious mind can deal with no problem, so it goes this way...and that's Ianto," Owen said, finger running off the screen and swooping around to point at him. Ianto flinched. "See? Ianto's brain. That's an automatic and logical reaction, that flinch."

"Thank you," Ianto murmured drily.

"That's why when someone walks past him he still asks if they want a coffee," Owen said. "Then you have option two -- if the input requires original thought, something other than an automatic response, it goes here..." he moved back to the box labeled DECISION and straight down, to a second branch. "It's checked to make sure the response won't endanger the Cyberman. Ianto, isn't there a storage room in corridor twelve?"

"I don't think it's structurally sound in that area," Ianto said, after an infinitesimal hesitation. Jack wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been watching. He saw Gwen and Tosh felt the same. Ianto bowed his head, cheeks flushing. They all knew what had been in corridor twelve.

" _Not_ Ianto," Owen said. He sounded -- not gentle, precisely, but the usual edge was missing from his voice. Jack thought about how he had found Owen, what Owen had undergone to bring him here to Torchwood, and decided this might not be any easier on Owen than on Ianto. Owen turned back to the tree and kept going. "Say he's faced with something he has no prepared response for and can't improvise around, it's kicked back to the decision node and goes to the transmitter," he said, tracing the third branch with his finger. "From there he receives instructions directly from her. That's why he's blanking. Ianto, how'd you get her out of Torchwood?"

All heads turned to Ianto. His eyes were blank, staring ahead, face slack. After a second he closed his eyes and when he opened them they had some life again.

"The microtransmitter Tosh decoded," Owen gave her a nod of the head, "was helping Ianto communicate directly with her."

Her -- not Lisa, not The Cyberwoman or even The Cyberman. Just _her_. Like they were afraid to speak the name.

"When he couldn't answer, it transmitted a query, and the answer was transmitted back," Owen continued.

"When he blanks out it's because he's expecting a reply command," Tosh said. "Like a computer querying a server that isn't there."

"And he gets back a 404," Owen agreed.

"So...we've been talking to...her?" Gwen asked cautiously. "Sometimes? Her...through Ianto?"

It was a chilling idea, and it made Jack's skin crawl. Tosh looked intrigued; Owen looked disgusted.

"The rest of the branches?" Jack asked, pointing to the sub-branches that led off from the three main ones.

"Mostly medical documentation for his file -- nerve responses, impulse control, not really relevant but I can go into it if you've got four hours and a medical degree," Owen said.

"Easy," Jack warned him, and turned to Ianto. "Ianto."

Ianto looked up.

"Does this seem right to you?"

Ianto opened his mouth, paused -- a real hesitation, hopefully -- and then closed it, frowning. Jack realised his mistake.

"Is Owen's theory accurate?" he corrected. Of course it wasn't _right_. Nothing about this was right.

"Incomplete," Ianto said, turning to look at Owen, nodding. "But accurate, yes."

"Incomplete?" Owen asked, offended. "What's missing?"

Ianto's eyes shifted to the mutant tree. "It wasn't always a response," he said quietly. "Sometimes she just did things. I did things, because she made me."

Owen's eyebrows lifted. Tosh leaned forward.

"Like what?" Owen asked.

"Don't answer that," Jack said sharply. Ianto's head whipped up to look at him, startled, but there was also a hint of gratitude in his face. Whatever it had been, there was no need to make Ianto confess to it in front of the others. And Jack suspected some of what she'd made him do would be hard for anyone to admit.

Owen gave Jack a sceptical grimace, but he tapped the side of the screen to clear it. "So, briefing over. Plan of attack?"

"Attack?" Gwen asked, sounding alarmed. "We're not taking the Falklands, Owen. It's Ianto."

Owen shrugged. "Still need a plan. You're not well, mate," he said to Ianto.

"Yes, I know that," Ianto replied.

"What do you recommend?" Jack asked Owen, who ticked a list off on his fingers.

"Intensive cognitive deprogramming. Biofeedback's a possibility. Retraining. If those don't take, Retcon."

"Is he dangerous?" Jack asked.

"I don't think so. Unless you were a psychopath before she got hold of you," Owen said to Ianto. Ianto bluescreened for a minute, then shook his head and smiled a little.

"He doesn't belong in a cell, Jack," Gwen said. "He belongs in hospital."

"I _know_ that," Jack said, irritated. "Owen, is that something you can do here?"

Owen shook his head. "Not my game. Not if you want it done properly. Besides, I haven't the time to nanny the secretary all day and still save the world from aliens."

Jack nodded. "Okay. Everyone clear out. Ianto and I need to have a chat."

Tosh gathered her laptop and cords and followed Owen out; Gwen lingered, rubbing Ianto's shoulder affectionately, and then followed with a warning look at Jack that he felt was entirely undeserved. Yes, he had threatened to execute Ianto two days ago, but honestly, at the time Ianto had just finished pointing a gun at all of them.

Gwen had come closest of any of them to dying -- death, conversion, it amounted to the same thing in his mind -- so perhaps she had a right to feel bound to Ianto, to protect him. Or perhaps she was trying a little too hard because, on some level, she was _angry_ at him. Whether it was Ianto's fault or not...it was hard not to be angry. He understood that, but he suspected Gwen wouldn't.

When the door had closed behind her, Jack turned back to Ianto. He was watching Jack, face carefully neutral -- waiting for his sentence, perhaps.

"I don't know about you, but I _love_ it when people talk about me like I'm not in the room," Jack said.

"I'm used to it," Ianto replied, then glanced away. "Not being noticed, I mean."

"But you wanted to be," Jack said. Ianto flinched. "She made you hide. I bet you were desperate for someone to see."

Ianto was silent for a while before he responded. Jack wondering if that decision node of his was kicking in.

"I don't blame any of you," Ianto finally said. "When I want to disappear I'm very good at it."

"Ianto, look at me please," Jack said. Ianto turned back and met his eyes. As if it were a command, rather than a request. Jack sighed.

"I can retcon you, if you want," he said. "I can make this whole thing go away. All the time here, the end of Canary Wharf, all of it."

Ianto gave him a dry look. "Not without risking brain damage."

"Okay, maybe not everything. If we only take a couple of months, you should be all right."

"But?" Ianto said.

"But...there is a greater risk when the subject has undergone a significant personality change or is suffering from a mental illness," Jack admitted. "I'm not going to force you. It's up to you."

Ianto shook his head. There was a slight pause first; Jack knew what that meant, now, and he leaned forward.

"Retcon," he said. Ianto flinched. "Okay. That's all I need to know. Well, I can't throw you in the cells, I can't check you into a hospital, and Owen can't handle you."

He realised, belatedly, that he sounded annoyed; as if Ianto was one more problem to deal with.

"I can find you someone to help," he said. "That's not a problem. But if you need more than what Owen can do -- "

Ianto's lips quirked briefly. "There's always Providence Park."

Without really knowing, he had put his finger squarely on it; yes, Providence Park of a sort, but not the one Ianto was thinking of. The Providence Park of the alien set, the asylum for Rift survivors. Built-in security, just in case, and full-time therapeutic staff.

Ianto would need to go to Flat Holm.

***

"I didn't really do anything," Carstairs says on the tape, and there's a crackle in the background, then a noise -- metal on metal. A chair, perhaps, being inched in closer. "The Doctor...he began it."

"Tell me about it," Jack says softly.

"Yes, sir." Carstairs was handsome, but not Jack's type -- one of those soldiers Jack had tried it on in the early days and always been shoved back by. A shame. So...obedient, except when he wasn't. "There were things we couldn't see. Literally. We were, huh, I guess you could say hypnotised. There was this machine, they used it to communicate -- the General, I mean, and his kind. I couldn't see it, Lady Jenny couldn't either. The Doctor told us to look, really look, and then we saw it...and that was the start. I started to see things for what they really were."

Jack remembers thinking that it was like that, back then; some of the soldiers came into the trenches bursting with patriotism and pride and ready to kill the fucking Huns, and then they started to see things. Things as they really were.

But this is not that. Just a pretty metaphor.

"It seemed like the more we saw of the world, the more we _saw_ it. I'm sorry, Captain, I'm not explaining it well."

"You're doing fine, Lieutenant."

"The more we traveled, the easier it became to choose the other side. The resistance fighters, you understand. There were machines that could break the hypnotism, I saw them, but we didn't need them. We just needed to see further, to see more. New experiences. Sometimes we didn't know what was true, but that was so much better than knowing wrong. It was a terrible kind of freedom.

"So it was gradual."

"As we went, yes. At one point they put me back under, they used a machine to re-hypnotise me. It's worse not to know, sir, worse to see the untruths and believe them than it is not to know what the untruths are."

Carstairs was a bit of a poet. Jack can appreciate that more, now, than he could.

"I think once the mind cracks open a little, sir, everything else must follow. Seeing all we saw just made it easier."

"I'll need a more detailed briefing than that from you, Carstairs, in a little while."

"Of course. I can write a mission report. Only...can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"This isn't an ordinary military debriefing, is it, Captain Harkness?"

There is a pause. "No."

Carstairs clears his throat. "And are you really a Captain, sir? Only -- only I can't abide being lied to anymore. I can't. It's why they sent me home, you see; I couldn't even trust my superiors, because sometimes they really did lie."

Men lie in war. Men lie to start wars. Jack knows this, and yet still he knows twenty years from that moment he went back to war again. If only to protect a few poor boys from the lies that were, and are, so much worse than Torchwood's.

"I am a Captain, Lieutenant Carstairs. I fought too. In here, if I can't be truthful, I won't answer at all. I promise you."

A soft breath. "That's a great relief, Captain Harkness."

"I know, soldier. Get some rest. Tomorrow someone will bring you pen and paper to write your report with."

"Thank you, sir."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Employee Statement" in this chapter was not written by me. It is taken from the BBC extras, archived at the **[Ianto's Desktop](http://community.livejournal.com/iantos_desktop/1946.html)** comm. To whom, I may add, I owe a debt of gratitude for their excellent historical timeline of the TW/DW universe.

Jack thought about Lieutenant Carstairs that afternoon, as he and Ianto stood on the dock and waited for the boat to pull up. To break free, one only needs a single crack, and then to see as much as possible. To distinguish truth from lie, one has to see everything.

Well, no better place to start than the Bristol Channel.

He'd offered to take Ianto home to get clothes, maybe some books, but Ianto had bluescreened so hard at the suggestion that it took five minutes to bring him back. Jack was going to go there tomorrow, to see what was so strange about Ianto's flat, but today, no. Enough for today. So Ianto had assurances that they had clothing at the facility, and books to read, and he'd seemed complacent enough with that.

"Officially," Jack said, watching the boat delicately slide into place against the mooring-posts, "you're on paid suspension from Torchwood. Don't worry about your job, we'll figure that out later. You're going to a secure facility but you're not a prisoner. If you want out, we'll figure out another way. Just tell one of the nurses and they'll call me."

Ianto was silent.

"Give me a sign, wave a flag or something," Jack said. Ianto turned to him and nodded. It was probably the best he could expect. "Are you curious at all? About where you're going?"

"P -- pa -- " Ianto stuttered, looking like he was struggling for control. "Part of me -- "

"Take your time," Jack said.

"Part of me thinks you're going to kill me," Ianto said, still looking forward. The boat's engine cut, and the captain waved at them, gesturing for them to come down. "You know. Dump me in the bay."

"Only part?"

"I'm not afraid. I don't think I can be. It's horrible," Ianto said, with a humourless laugh. "I can't feel anything, Jack."

"I've seen you show fear. I've seen you look ashamed, since it happened," Jack said, leading him down the steps.

"I have no context for this," Ianto's voice was flat. "No signs. Nothing is familiar."

"Hi-yo, Captain," the captain of the boat called. "Your usual?"

"Yep," Jack said, stepping aboard. He turned and made sure Ianto got down the short walkway safely. "Usual pay."

"He looks livelier than the others," the captain observed. "Right, there's tea in the galley, you know the way."

Jack led the way into the closet-sized kitchen aft of the bridge, pouring them each a cup of tepid tea from the strapped-in decanter. The engines kicked up and the boat pushed away again.

"Well, for the record," Jack said, sipping the tea and making a face, "I'm not going to kill you. I'm taking you to a medical unit run by Torchwood. You'll be kept away from the others, for your own safety -- they're not like you. They're not going to get better," he clarified, though Ianto didn't seem like he cared. "Sometime I'll explain all this to you. Just do what the doctors want you to do. I'll come check up on you."

Ianto nodded and placidly drank his tea. Outside, the sun was just beginning to set. By the time he left Ianto and made it back to Cardiff, it would just barely be dark.

God, what a long day.

***

**Torchwood 1 Civilian survivor report No. 267. 2006:**

I'm bloody lucky. I know that now, no offence. At the time, though...

I've been wounded in fighting before. I've seen others come off worse than me -- but this was different. Being marched towards those machines, seeing what they did to others, knowing there was nothing you could do about it -- well, the dreams are still there nearly every night.

They were just throwing us into those machines. That last moment before they threw me in I was thinking, I dunno, let's be calm, let's be proper, but who cares? I went into it screaming and it all clamped down and the knives.

And I was wondering -- I was really wondering -- I mean, like you do with an operation, you know -- surely they'll use drugs or something. Surely there'll be a bit of it where they've got to, because the body's just going to go into shock or something and die. So I was looking out for the needles, the really serious blow-me drugs that'd somehow make it all bearable. And I couldn't see them, and the poor sods before me just wouldn't stop screaming. But I went into it, I landed in it thinking there'll be drugs, there'll be drugs.

And there just weren't. And I was thinking please let it be quick. And I'd seen it before and I was thinking it had seemed fairly quick, but not really that quick. But then that first saw came down and cut through my leg. And it was quick. Bloody quick, I'll give it that. But not really quick enough. And then it stopped. Suddenly. All the power went, and the lights, and I could hear as the saw was tearing through my leg, I could hear it slowing down from that really sharp, quick whine, I could hear it slowing down like a record. And then it stopped. Most of the way through my leg.

And I just screamed. I think I realised I'd pass out soon. Just stuck there. In that much pain and fear and bloodloss and shock and darkness. But it took forever. And I can still remember myself struggling against it. That saw stuck in my bone. Like wiggling away at a loose tooth when you're a kid.

_Statement continues on following page._

***

Jack was on the boat back to the mainland, having seen Ianto safely settled, turned over Owen's research, and explained to the head of the facility what to do with him, when they left the mobile dead-zone and his phone beeped. He checked it and found an email from Tosh.

_UNIT reports all survivors are cleared. They're closing their case files. Thought you'd like to know. I've put Gwen on ideas for keeping the survivors monitored, like you said._

_The Rift seems to be giving us a break. I don't think we'll have any activity for at least three days. I'm setting up a roster for on-call duty._

He smiled faintly and tapped out a reply.

_thanks tosh_

_clear me off tomorrows roster_

_taking a sick day_

_iantos taken care of well looked after_

He got a smiley face in return, and a single sentence: _Enjoy your big drink._

Jack felt that after the day he'd had he deserved to enjoy his drink. He didn't drink often anymore -- pilot's rules, never within twelve hours of going on duty. And since Torchwood was, as it were, always on duty, that did usually keep him on water. But if the Rift was quiet...

He stepped onto the dock, remembering -- before the barrage, before gentrification, this whole area had been rife with bars, little places with sawdust on the floor where you could get drunk and get in a fight and fuck someone. Usually a woman, since trying it with the men often led to more fighting. But there had been two little places where men and women of a more flexible nature had gathered...oh, the roaring twenties, such a good time to be alive and handsome, even if life was a little more inconvenient than now.

He walked up past the Quay, past the Millennium Centre, stopping at a streetcorner to consider matters. Even in this Earthbound little century there was plenty of variety. So what did he want? He wanted a large glass of expensive alcohol, which meant somewhere upscale. Now: girl or boy, or something less binary? Boy, he thought, and -- while he didn't want to close off his options -- boys in straight bars were so much _work_. He'd worked enough for one day.

Upscale gay bar. Well, that narrowed down his choices considerably.

A cab cruised by slowly and he hailed it, giving the name of a place near the University. Too nice for the beer-and-chips crowd, too downtown for the closeted husbands. When it let him off he overtipped the driver and wandered inside.

It wasn't quite busy yet, but definitely filling up -- there were a handful of women in one corner, a few crowds of men here and there amongst the tables. Suzie had explained it to him once when he'd remarked on the fact that straight women in gay bars weren't likely to get much action; apparently sometimes it was nice to go out drinking somewhere you knew your arse probably wasn't going to get grabbed. Jack didn't understand the appeal of not having one's arse grabbed, but then he wasn't a woman, or of this century, so he accepted the explanation and made sure to smile harmlessly and leave them alone whenever he encountered them.

He ordered a whiskey, neat, "something expensive", and savoured it while he considered his new options. He wasn't accustomed to feeling guilt about sex, and the vague unease over how he'd treated Ianto still bothered him. He could pick out a likely boy with black hair and blue eyes and work it all out, both his guilt and his frustration, but he'd had enough of dark bent heads for one day. Maybe a blond. Or the dark-skinned man at the end of the bar -- whose boyfriend had just put his arm around his waist, with a glare at Jack. No, then.

"Tell me if you've heard this one," someone said to his left, and Jack turned to find a young man in a University t-shirt sitting next to him. "Hello, soldier."

Jack stared at him for a second, and then laughed.

"You'd be surprised how rare it is these days," he said. "People have no respect for the classics."

"It's a crying shame," the man agreed. Not as young as Jack had first thought -- he had shaggy brown hair, which made him look like an undergraduate, but there was a little too much age in his face, a few small lines around his eyes and mouth. You could cut his Valleys accent with a knife. "Now, ask me what my major is."

"Hmm." Jack narrowed his eyes. "Professor of literature."

The man looked delighted. "How'd you know? Have we met before?"

"I'm a little bit psychic," Jack told him, making a very serious face.

"Not really though."

Jack turned back to his drink. "Nah. It's the wrong bar for the science set, and you're not pretentious enough to teach film. Toss-up between history and literature. Lucky guess. 'Nother one," he said to the barman, sliding his empty glass across the counter.

"On my tab," the man added. The barman raised an eyebrow at Jack, who shrugged and nodded. "Professor Bill Quinn," the man said, offering his hand.

"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack answered, giving him his best grin.

"Captain of...the Air Force?" Professor Bill Quinn said.

"Now who's psychic?"

"I hate to tell you this, but you have tiny airplanes for cufflinks," Bill informed him. "You stationed over here?"

"Expatriate," Jack corrected, giving him a little toast with his new drink. "RAF."

"Been in Cardiff long?"

Jack grinned. "Yeah. Sometimes it feels like decades."

"Ahh, it's not so bad. Could be worse."

"Could be England," Jack said into his drink, which got the intended reaction; Bill cracked up laughing and clapped him on the shoulder. Jack smiled back at him. "So, Bill," he said, turning to face him completely. "I see two options."

"Oh?" Bill asked, intrigued now.

"Yeah. You could let me buy the next round and we could talk for another hour or so," Jack said, "or you could take me back to your place once I finish my drink and I'll prove to you just how much I appreciate the Welsh."

Bill raised an eyebrow. "You're very forward."

"Military efficiency," Jack replied.

"Can't fault that," Bill said thoughtfully. He rested a hand on Jack's thigh. "And I do support our men in uniform. Finish your drink."

Jack downed it in two gulps. Bill got that look, a look so many people in this century got around Jack: wondering what he'd got himself into and at the same time aware that he couldn't even consider backing down now.

He was a bossy bottom. And a screamer, which suited Jack to the bone.

"I feel very appreciated," Bill said, once he'd caught his breath (for the second time). "Very, very appreciated."

"Told you," Jack answered, not bothering to open his eyes. They'd pretty much destroyed the bed, but there was a pillow somewhere near his face. "Thank you, by the way."

"Hmm," Bill touched his chest, fingers idly exploring skin. "You did look like someone who'd had a rough day."

"Sometimes they're all rough," Jack mumbled sleepily. "Mind if I stay?"

"Are you kidding? I'm praying for a repeat performance tomorrow morning."

"Won't be a problem," Jack said, drifting off to the sound of Bill's pleased laughter.

***

Jack didn't like to think too much about what he saw the next day, after he'd left a very satisfied Bill to go break into Ianto's flat. Well, "break into;" he had keys to everyone's homes, but he also had a wrist strap that unlocked most doors.

It seemed normal at first, until you stood in it and really looked for a couple of minutes. Slowly, as Jack inspected the living room, it coalesced into a nightmare of right-angles and precision. Everything was ordered to within the quarter inch, spotlessly clean, and terrifyingly square. A row of uniform-sized packing boxes were stacked along one wall, edges aligned perfectly with each other. The sofa -- he measured, to be sure -- was precisely an inch away from the wall on one side and an inch away from the side-table on another. The silverware, when he investigated the kitchen, was stacked with care and arranged by size in the drawer. The folds on the _window-drapes_ were symmetrical. Ianto's closet looked like the racks in a mid-range men's clothing store. His books were all the same size; no doubt anything that hadn't fit into the parameters was still in a packing box. The bed had a throw on top that was perfectly centred, as was the digital alarm clock on the bedside table.

Ianto had seemed tidy but he'd shown no signs of any compulsive disorder. Even if there was a possibility he'd been hiding something like that, Jack knew better. She had done this. Had made Ianto do it. Keep everything precise, measured, controlled. That was what Cybermen did. No room for mess or emotion.

He made a note to hire some movers and have Tosh find Ianto somewhere new to live. There was no way he could want to come back to this. Just thinking about it made Jack's throat close up and his skin itch.

***

Jack had regular reports from Flat Holm once a month, and urgent memos if they were needed, which occasionally they were. They came from the head of the facility, but he knew that most of the notes were written up by his assistant, Dr. Stone. He sent his new request directly to her, and she didn't fail him. At the end of each day, in his inbox, would be a few lines about Ianto -- mostly whether he was responding, and how well, what he'd eaten or was reading or was doing. Jack had made it clear he was to have run of the island except for the area with the other...patients, and Dr. Stone reported on his movements inasmuch as she could track them.

The Rift was suspiciously quiet, that first week. If it weren't for an increase in weevil sightings and a few dumpings of space-trash here and there, Jack would have been downright concerned. Still, it was a rest, and they all needed it, especially down a man. The coffee suffered. So did they all, when it became clear that nobody had thought to restock the loo rolls. As it turned out, Gwen did not take kindly to being sent out for supplies.

If they were curious as to where Ianto had gone, or when he would be back, they didn't ask. True, they had more devious ways of attempting to find out, but Jack was on to most of those and knew they wouldn't find anything.

At the end of the week, Jack went back to Flat Holm, with a shipment of supplies for the facility and a bouquet of flowers for Dr. Stone. He asked one of the nurses to take them to her; he had rounds to do first. Captain's Inspection, the nurses called it. As difficult as it was, nightmarish really, Jack wasn't the one who had to live here, and the least he could do was show his face to the people he had for all intents and purposes imprisoned.

Better than what they'd had. He just had to keep reminding himself. Ten years ago, they'd have been executed or kept in the cells. That was old Torchwood's way.

When he was done speaking to the ones that would talk and smiling at the ones who would smile and trying to get a glimpse of the ones who hid, he found Dr. Stone waiting for him in the kitchen, part of the wing totally locked away from the patients (fire, knives, glass; no, best not let them in the kitchen).

"Captain," she said, smiling warmly. "Thank you for the flowers."

"My pleasure," he told her, kissing her cheek. She laughed and rubbed it away. "Everything seems..."

"Normal?" she asked, with a tilt of her mouth. Flat Holm made them cynical so quickly.

"Up to standards," he told her.

"I'm glad to hear it. I expect you want to look in on Mr. Jones."

"Thank you for the reports," he said, as she led him through another secure doorway and down a hall. The entire facility had once been a barracks for the battery stationed here during the war; the doctors and nurses had what used to be the officers' quarters, and he'd had the enlisted mens' housing reworked for the patients. The last wing was ammunition and supply storage, and that was where they found Ianto: at one end of a long narrow room, eating an apple and sitting on a sofa below one of the few windows, reading in the natural sunlight, the dangling cage-covered bulbs dark.

"He looks healthy," Jack observed, watching him through the doorway. Ianto hadn't looked up.

"I think Dr. Lamar likes working with someone who's not a lost case," Dr. Stone said, crossing her arms. "Ianto responds well. Dr. Lamar spends a lot of time with him."

"Not neglecting -- "

"There's not much there to neglect," Dr. Stone said. "Captain, most of these people are beyond the help of a psychiatrist, even one as good as Dr. Lamar."

"I know that."

"He's not neglecting anyone," she sighed. "Ianto is just...clearly the best part of his day. He wants to be better, poor lad. Well, they all do, but Ianto knows he _can_ be."

"Has he asked about the rest of the patients?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. He doesn't ask much of anything."

Jack nodded. "Gimme a moment with him."

"Take all the time you need. Lunch in half an hour if you want."

Jack waited for her footsteps to die down and the distant sound of a door closing before he stepped into the room. Ianto kept reading. Jack coughed softly, not wanting to scare him, but got no reaction. Ianto had, he'd noticed, stopped chewing the bite of apple in his mouth.

"Ianto," he said. "Ianto?"

Bluescreen. Apparently Dr. Lamar had not made _that_ much progress.

Still, as Jack tried to decide what to do next, Ianto closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. His eyes opened. He swallowed the apple in his mouth and looked up.

"You startled me," he said, not looking at all startled.

"Sorry."

Ianto closed the book and stood, setting it on the arm of the sofa. He looked down at the apple and then placed it very delicately on the floor.

It was awkward, like visiting his men in the hospital after they'd been shell-shocked in the Great War. One never knew what to say.

"Good book?" Jack asked. Ianto glanced at it.

"Read it before," he said.

"They treating you well?"

"Well, they're treating me," Ianto allowed. His lips twitched. "It's not contagious."

"Sorry?"

"You won't catch it if you come closer than shouting range."

Jack grinned. "That was almost funny, Ianto."

"One tries," Ianto replied, as Jack walked forward. "They said you'd be visiting. You never told us about this place."

Jack shrugged. "Very few would understand."

"That's what the doctors say."

"Dr. Lamar?"

Ianto nodded. "He's good, I guess. He's good at spotting when I..." he waved a hand. "I do it less now."

"Progress."

"Yup." Ianto shoved his hands in his pockets. "Can I -- " he started, and then stopped abruptly. Jack raised his eyebrows. "Sorry, I was about to ask if I could get you a coffee."

"Social niceties," Jack said. "We fill the silences with them."

"Usually more appropriate ones." Ianto gave him a square look. Jack shrugged.

"Do you have everything you need here?" he asked. "Anything you want?"

"I don't suppose we get wi-fi in the middle of the Bristol Channel," Ianto said, but there was a real wistfulness in his voice. "I'd like...something, sometimes I worry -- "

Jack waited for him to finish.

"I know what we do. Sometimes I wonder if Cardiff is still there. I'd like to be able to...look in on the world outside."

"The doctors have a server. I'll make sure you get a laptop," Jack said.

"Thank you."

"No posting things anywhere, and no email. You look in, you don't open the doors. Your access'll be monitored."

"So, no pornography then," Ianto said, and then looked immensely pleased with himself. Jack grinned.

"That was an original thought, wasn't it?" he said. "You just said that without even thinking and it was all you, huh?"

"It was," Ianto said. Jack laughed.

"Watch all the porn you want, it'll give the nurses a show and probably do you good," he said, clapping Ianto on the shoulder. Ianto looked down at his hand, then back up at him, and Jack cut it off before it could start.

"Don't -- say it," he said. The mischief faded from Ianto's eyes, the horrible fake flirtation.

"No, I suppose not," he answered. "Thank you, Jack."

"I'll be back in a week," Jack told him. "Look after yourself."

He turned to go, but stopped in the doorway for a look back. Ianto had settled in the corner of the sofa again, but he wasn't reading; the book sat closed on his lap, the apple ignored on the floor. He was just sitting, staring at the wall.

***

The second week Jack visited, Ianto was in the kitchen, talking with Dr. Stone. His face lit up when he saw Jack.

"They said you were here," he said. Jack spread his arms -- _here I am!_ \-- and Dr. Stone laughed.

"What, no flowers this time?" she asked.

"Hey, it's only been a week, did you already kill the last bunch?" Jack replied. Dr. Stone patted his arm and gave Ianto a significant look.

"Shall I let you talk?" she asked, but she wasn't asking Jack. Ianto paused, but he didn't shut down; instead, after a moment, he nodded. Dr. Stone disappeared through the door into the ward, closing it carefully behind her.

"How's the pornography working out?" Jack asked. Ianto shook his head sharply. "What?"

"We shouldn't go there," he said, struggling with the words. He gave Jack a suddenly uncomfortable look. Oh -- _oh._ Breaking conditioning, breaking programming -- best not to flirt, even in jest.

"Okay," Jack said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Not going there. But -- you're good?"

"Better," Ianto said. "I've stopped doing the thing." He waved a hand at his face, made a blank expression. Ah. No more bluescreens. That was progress. "Mostly, anyhow."

"That's good," Jack said. The kitchen seemed very dim, suddenly, and very small. The pull of sunlight was always a temptation in this place. "Do you get aboveground much?" he asked.

"They say I can. I haven't really. Just up to the gun emplacements."

Jack grinned. "Feel like a walk?"

They left through the staff quarters -- Jack wasn't ready yet to escort him through the ward -- and came up not far from the eastern cliffs. When he'd bought Flat Holm he'd been out here all the time, as often as he could get away, and he'd specifically gone looking for one or two things.

He led the way down a narrow path to the cliffs, Ianto picking his way behind him, and then along the edge to where an iron stake protruded a few feet from the ground. He'd driven it himself as a marker, and that first time as a hitch for his climbing gear before he'd found the steps cut into the rock, steps invisible from anywhere but nearly on top of them. Some Welsh smuggler had been very artful indeed at his craft.

Ianto let out a surprised yelp when Jack rapidly disappeared down the stairs, and when Jack turned to look up he saw Ianto's face peering down after him. He waited until Ianto had taken a few hesitant steps, as if he couldn't believe it wasn't some kind of optical illusion, and then continued.

"Two hundred years ago," Jack said into the wind, as they descended, "Flat Holm was a smuggler's base. Customs could see them from here -- " he pointed to the coast, visible in the distance, "but they couldn't do a thing about it. Y'know why?"

"I couldn't guess," Ianto called back. "Bloody _hell_ I'm going to fall to my death."

"You're fine. They couldn't do anything about the smugglers because they _didn't have a boat_ to get to the island!" Jack laughed, stepping onto firm ground again. Ianto followed in a shower of limestone chips.

"Perhaps they weren't trying very hard," Ianto suggested.

"Maybe that, too. So..." Jack walked his hand along the cliff face as he went, "the smugglers set up a camp and dug a mineshaft, and used it to store buried treasure."

Here was the mineshaft, the entry of it worn smooth by two hundred years of weathering; further on was a cave mouth, but the shaft angled into it before branching out into a network of tunnels that riddled the island. It was Flat Holm's secret, which was a good trick, since Flat Holm had been occupied by one form of troublemaker or another since the Bronze Age. He took a penlight out of his pocket and led the way through the shaft to the cave, listening to be sure Ianto's footsteps followed his. A curve around, a few steps forward, avoiding old glass bottles and rotten remains of tea crates --

And there it was. The edge of the cave mouth, a perfect sheltered view of the Cardiff shoreline, a warm pocket of comfort out of the wind. Ianto came to stand behind him a little, a bottle in one hand.

"Buried treasure?" he asked, holding it up. It was empty, but undeniably had once held some form of booze.

"Brandy and tea. Taxable contraband," Jack told him. "Put it down and come look."

Ianto joined him at the edge, staring out at the water and the dim coast. After a while, watching out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw him visibly relax.

"How are you?" Jack asked softly. Ianto took a while to reply.

"Miserable," he said.

"Bad as that?" Jack asked, honestly surprised.

"My girlfriend was slaughtered in front of me. The thing that killed her made me -- it -- you know about that," Ianto said. "All my friends are dead. I live in a munitions storage room. I will never...ever...be normal again."

"Normal is overrated," Jack said.

"Normal is who I was. Even in London, at Torchwood. I will never be the same as who I was. I will always be some patched-together _thing_ from whatever she left of me. So yeah, Jack. Bad as that," Ianto finished, but there was no real malice in his voice.

"But you feel," Jack said. "Pain. Anger. Fear of death," he added lightly. Ianto snorted. "You were happy to see me. That was real. All that's better than before."

"You'll forgive me if I remain unconvinced," Ianto said. Jack glanced at him and could see -- in his face, in the way he held himself, a thing he remembered. When you wanted to die but just couldn't quite be fucked to make up your mind. Not that Jack had any choice in the matter in his own case.

"Let's go back," he said. "You know the way now. Come here if you want. Spit in the sea, throw bottles on the rocks, stare at the coast, whatever."

Ianto nodded and followed him back, up the hidden steps, across the cliff and down into the barracks complex. Jack left him there with the promise he'd be back the following week.

***

Two days later, Ianto showed up in the Hub.

Jack, who had been looking forward to an hour of quiet in which to enjoy his breakfast before the others arrived, just about jumped out of his skin when the proximity alert sounded. He wiped his mouth, grabbed a shirt from the back of his chair, and ran out into the Hub barefoot, pulling the shirt over his head.

And there was Ianto Jones, wearing a suit, hair immaculate, looking around as if he'd expected it to change.

Jack gaped. "How did you get here?"

Ianto looked at him. "How did you?" he asked, and walked past Jack towards the main atrium. The response made no _sense_.

"How the hell did you get off Flat Holm?" Jack demanded, following him -- oh, cold steel on bare feet. Ianto was crossing the walkways over the pool, heading for his worktable.

"Unlike customs two hundred years ago, I had a boat," Ianto replied. His voice was dangerously flat. Jack grabbed his shoulder and turned him around and saw -- not total blankness, but enough to know that Ianto had checked out, and autopilot was filling in.

"Do they know you're here?" Jack asked. "They should have called me."

"Don't know," Ianto said, and tried to pull away. Jack held on, grabbed Ianto's other arm and kept him there. Ianto waited patiently to be let go.

Jack leaned in, studying his eyes. There was a lurking panic in them.

"I know," he said, "that you are _in there_."

It seemed to work. Ianto blinked, looking around him. Back at Jack, and then around again. Jack waited.

"Oh, bollocks," Ianto said, closing his eyes. Jack let him go.

Just then, he heard his phone ringing, back in his office, halfway across the Hub.

He took Ianto's wrist and dragged him back, dug in his coat for a pair of handcuffs and cuffed him to the arm of a chair. Ianto looked at him, perplexed, and tugged; the chair rolled.

"Very effective," he drawled. Jack answered the phone on its final ring.

"Harkness," he barked.

"Captain, Ianto's gone missing," Dr. Stone's voice, panicked. "Dr. Lamar thinks he might have -- "

"He's here," Jack said, before anyone could even put the words into the air. "He came to the Hub. What the hell kind of crackerjack operation are you running over there?"

"I don't know how he got away," she protested. "He's not under guard like the other prisoners, you said he could come and go. I know he was here at lights out last night. We had to -- "

She stopped suddenly. Jack had a very, very bad feeling.

"You had to what?" he asked.

"It was going to go in today's report, I swear," she said. "It happened after I sent yesterday's."

"What happened?" Jack asked. He glanced at Ianto, who had calmly seated himself in the chair he was handcuffed to.

"He got into the ward through the kitchen," she said. "Someone left the door unlatched. It was one of Benjamin's bad nights, and you know how he sets the others off when he really wants to -- "

Jack covered his face with his hand. "Yeah. I know."

"We got Ianto out, but someone had to explain it to him, and I was busy trying to calm Benjamin down, so one of the nurses -- "

The nurses. Who didn't actually know what Flat Holm was all about.

"I get the picture," Jack said. "Look, just -- tell them he's here and he's fine. I'll call Lamar later. You find whoever left the kitchen door unlatched, I want their name and I want them confined to quarters until I can come chew them out myself."

"Yes, Captain."

Jack hung up and ran a hand over his face again, up into his hair. Ianto watched him. He looked almost...afraid.

"So," Jack said finally. "You've been in the ward."

"Are they aliens?" Ianto asked. "They look like people. Most of them. But they don't sound like people."

This was not the time nor the place he wanted to explain the science of the Rift to Ianto. He shook his head.

"They're survivors of the Rift," he said, hoping that would work well enough. "We take them there, we take care of them, we do what we can."

"But by we," Ianto said, as if he were working out a logic puzzle, "you mean _you_. Because that's not the kind of thing Owen or Tosh would shut up about, and I don't think Gwen would still work here if she knew."

"Few would understand," Jack said dully, echoing what he'd said to Ianto that day in the munitions room. "You obviously didn't."

Ianto looked around him again, as if he were wondering where he actually was.

"It's better than the alternative," Jack offered. It sounded weak to his own ears, even if it was true. Ianto shrugged. Jack studied him. God, even his tie was knotted perfectly. "Where'd you get the suit?"

"Keep a spare upstairs in the information centre," Ianto said.

"How'd you get the boat?"

"One of the nurses has a boyfriend with a motorboat," Ianto replied. "He comes to visit. I nicked it."

"Well, that's going to stop," Jack said.

"He's the nurse who left the door unlatched, so I imagine so," Ianto remarked. There was still something unsettlingly calm about his demeanor.

"So you saw that," Jack said, fitting everything together, "and you ran away...and came here."

"Can you undo the handcuffs?" Ianto said in a strained voice.

"Yeah," Jack came around the desk and unlocked them. The key had been on the edge of the desk, well within Ianto's reach, the whole time. Jack crouched next to the chair, looking up. "So, I guess now we ask: what to do with you, Ianto Jones?"

"I thought it was the wind blowing past my window at night," Ianto said quietly, rubbing his wrist. "Turns out it was people screaming."

"So no more Flat Holm."

Ianto shook his head.

Jack stood up, leaning back on his desk. "Okay. Let me find my shoes and I'll take you home."

***

"This is not my flat," Ianto said, standing in the garden of the little rented house in Cathays.

"Did you really want to go back to that?" Jack asked. Ianto shuddered.

"No," he said. "Did you find this?"

"Tosh did. You can afford it. We moved your stuff," Jack explained, passing him the key. "So...boxes, mostly. And I'm cheap, so the movers probably broke your plates. They were ugly plates," he added.

"Beggars, choosers," Ianto murmured, unlocking the front door. "For two pounds at a charity shop I wasn't going to complain."

The furniture, the landlord of Ianto's flat had said, came with the flat; there was nothing to move really but boxes, so Ianto's first view of his home was pretty much haphazard piles of cardboard. He explored it nevertheless, like a cat, acquainting himself with a new place, poking into the corners and studying his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His hands drifted out as if to place imaginary razor, toothbrush, comb, then clenched and pulled back. Jack pretended not to notice how precise the placements were. In the bedroom, an unfamiliar bed; Ianto glanced at Jack, who gave him an unrepentant look.

"Chairs aren't necessary. Beds are," Jack said. "I took it out of your salary."

"Oh." Ianto closed the bedroom door, walking back into the kitchen. "Thank you."

"You're still on suspension," Jack added, following him. "I don't care how ingenious that little escape plot of yours was. Two weeks isn't enough time."

"How long, then?" Ianto asked, playing with the flap of one of the open boxes. He reached in and took out a plate, whole and unbroken, holding it up for Jack to see. "Bad luck, I'm afraid."

"How long do you think?" Jack asked. "I don't know what you need."

"Dr. Lamar was going to suggest I come back, but I don't think he meant quite like this," Ianto said, setting the plate aside. "He says the best thing for me is to talk to people. Limited conversation to be had, on Flat Holm."

"Then you should do that," Jack said. "Take a few weeks. Unpack. Find a good local. Chat up your neighbours."

Ianto took another plate delicately out of the box and set it on top of the first. "That place. The island. You do realise it's a confined little piece of hell?"

So, not quite done with Flat Holm yet. Jack leaned against the counter.

"People have such middle-class ideas of hell," he complained. "It looks like hell because the walls are painted, the food is hot, and the patients are kept clean and safe, but they're still sick."

Ianto took a knife out of the box, studied it, set it across the plates. A big knife. Jack eyeballed it, but Ianto was already pulling glasses, wrapped in brown paper, out of the bottom.

"It looks like hell because all that window dressing makes the insanity more apparent," Jack continued. "Whereas real, actual hell is locking those people away with a bucket for shit and a bucket of food and not caring if they mix the two up."

Ianto looked up sharply.

"Real hell is being ordered to shoot a sixteen-year-old because it's less trouble than finding a way to give a boy who exhales cyanide gas some kind of life," Jack added. "That's what we used to do, Ianto, before I was head of Torchwood. So you tell me. Giving you apples to eat and people to help you, or letting you bluescreen and rot in the cell next to Janet's for the rest of your probably very short life. Which one would you prefer?"

Ianto looked down at the box. His lips curled a little. "Bluescreen. I hadn't heard that one. Bluescreen of death? Hard drive frozen, operating system broken? Am I close?"

"You're changing the subject."

"No, it's apt. Trust you," Ianto said. He looked up at Jack, sidelong. "I can stay here."

"Yes."

"When can I come back to work?"

"You tell me. Honestly," Jack said, when Ianto opened his mouth. "When you are honestly ready to come back, tell me."

"Until then?" Ianto asked. Jack gave him a blank look. "Until then, am I in quarantine?"

"Quarantine?" Jack asked, baffled. Ianto chewed on his lip.

"Will you come visit me here, or is that done now that I'm not at Flat Holm?" he asked.

Jack considered it. He hadn't actually made a plan. And it was heartbreaking, watching Ianto struggle to ask. On the other hand...

"When you want to see me," he said, "call me. Any hour of the day. In the meantime, try to find some peace."

Ianto nodded. Jack pushed away from the counter and headed towards the door.

"It's a nice house," Ianto called, when Jack was in the entryway. Jack paused, and Ianto leaned past the kitchen doorway to catch his eye. "Thank you. It's a nice house."

Jack gave him a smile. "I'll tell Tosh you said so."

***

A few days later, Jack got the first call. He was in the middle of bagging a weevil, and when his earpiece buzzed he thought it might be Tosh. He tapped it and said, "Harkness Exterminators, no vermin too toothy."

There was a pause before the caller replied. "...Jack?"

"Ianto Jones," Jack said cheerfully, tightening the hood over the weevil's head. "Good timing."

"I bought a sofa," Ianto said. There was a nervous edge to his voice. Jack hoisted the weevil over his shoulder and made for the SUV.

"That's good...?" he prompted.

"Can you come...help me?"

"You at home?"

"Yes."

"Be there in ten," Jack told him, and dumped the weevil in the back of the SUV. It'd be out for hours anyway.

He envisioned Ianto perplexed by some kind of Ikea furniture that needed two people to assemble. Could be fun. Or this was some odd pick-up line to do with christening a new sofa, which was unlikely but could be even more fun. Instead, when he knocked on the door, nobody answered.

"Ianto," he called. No reply. Jack let himself in -- door wasn't even locked -- and found Ianto sitting on a slightly battered sofa, head in his hands, phone still clenched in his fingers. It took him a second to figure out what was wrong.

The sofa was placed between two towers of boxes apparently serving as end-tables, and it looked...off, somehow.

He eyed the gap between sofa and wall, then the gaps between the arms of the sofa and the makeshift tables. They were precise and symmetrical, and Ianto was sitting in the exact centre.

"I can't move it," Ianto said.

"Can't be that heavy," Jack said cheerily.

"I can't. Move it."

Jack stood in front of him. "Did you put it there?"

Ianto nodded without looking up. Jack crouched and pulled his arms down, holding each wrist gently.

"Make me some coffee?" he asked. Ianto looked gratefully at him and stood, disappearing into the kitchen. Jack studied the arrangement -- it would look better tilted away from the wall anyway -- and shoved some of the boxes into a corner, yanking the sofa efficiently in front of them. There. Odd diagonal angle, weird misalignment with the boxes, and just slightly inconvenient if Ianto actually wanted to get at whatever was in them. Sorted.

He walked into the kitchen and was pleased to see a cluttery disarray here -- crumbs on the counter, dishes in the sink, pans on the stove. The expensive-looking coffee machine had pride of place, and Ianto was staring intently at the slow drip of it.

"Fixed it," Jack announced. "You'll stub your toes on it in the dark."

"Thanks," Ianto said.

"Glad you called." Jack watched him take the carafe out of the machine, pour out a cup, and add two spoonfuls of sugar. He left the sugar spoon in the coffee and passed it to Jack, who stirred. "So, you surviving?"

"Yep," Ianto said, replacing the carafe. "I was doing all right until just then."

"Flirting with the neighbours like you're supposed to?"

Ianto gave him a sardonic look. "Oh yes. I'm the social butterfly of the street."

"Give it time," Jack advised, drinking deep from the cup. "God, this coffee is good. Listen, I have a weevil in the boot, I can't stay. I'm glad you called, though. Want me to come back once I get it shifted?"

Ianto shook his head. "That's fine. I just...had a moment."

Jack noticed there was a table at the end of the kitchen, near the windows, with two chairs and a lamp standing nearby; it looked less orderly, more haphazard than the sofa. He leaned back out into the other room and saw a half-full bookshelf that he was sure they hadn't moved into the place. The books on it were of every size and colour, and apparently in no particular order.

"The sofa's the first big problem?" he asked. Ianto nodded. "Then you're fine."

"Fine," Ianto repeated, and smiled at Jack. "Sure. Thank you, again."

Jack took a last swallow and set his mug down. "No problem. See you in a few days, maybe? We'll get lunch? Call me."

Ianto walked him to the door, and Jack saw him look curiously, then approvingly at the sofa. Outside Jack paused, inhaled a breath of chilly Cardiff air, and felt very pleased. Time to go deal with the weevil.

***

**Torchwood 1 Civilian survivor report No. 267. 2006:**

_Continued from previous page._

Eventually, after all the drugs and the counselling and everything I realised I was lucky. I'm still alive. I'm mostly intact. But sitting there in hospital, trying not to look at the stump, trying not to look at other people not looking at the stump.

Turns out there were drugs -- not painkillers really, just stuff they pumped into you, turning your brain to mush. Took a while to flush that out of the system. Learning how to think properly again.

There was a lot of talk with the doctors. They tried fitting me with an artificial limb, but I just screamed when they brought it near me. They'd take it away, we would talk rationally about it, and I'd say okay and be calm and they'd bring it back and I'd start screaming again.

And I was on an open ward by then, so it wasn't nice.

So, they let me out eventually, with my crutches. Told me to come back if I ever changed my mind, which is, I think, a neat little turn of phrase.

There was lots more counselling. Sat in a halfway house, with lots of stairs and weak tea.

But eventually I'm here. Living this quiet life. I've found the flattest, quietest bit of Norfolk, and I've got a bungalow, for god's sake -- I'm like my Uncle John. There's still counselling, of course, and every now and then someone like you comes along, just to check that everything's fine with my mind.

***

That night, despite his vague satisfaction with himself and the world around him, Jack had bad dreams. Not the worst dreams, those usually only came out to stab at him when he was already living in nightmares during the day, but bad enough. Rare to remember this: the heat of the train and the smell of unwashed soldiers, the slap of playing cards and whine of a harmonica. Still, the minor annoyances of military travel were really hardly noticeable, compared to Jack's pleasure at being with his men. They seemed happy, spirited even. But then came the darkness of the tunnel, the smell of flowers and the flap of wings, and the terrible understanding when the light returned that his men were dead, all of them, and Jack was trapped in a train car full of corpses.

He woke with a start, an inhale instinctive, to remind him that he was alive. But when he emerged from his safe little den beneath the office, he heard a clatter and found Ianto there, impeccable in a suit, moving about the darkened Hub as if he'd never left.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, before he thought of it.

"Neither should you," Ianto replied. The same nonsensical reply as the last time, throwing Jack's accusation meaninglessly back against him. But this time Ianto wasn't an escapee from an asylum, and he didn't seem to be running on autopilot. Jack joined him at the computer, resting a hand on his shoulder experimentally. Ianto glanced at it, processed it, turned back to his work.

"Whaddaya got?" Jack asked, keeping his voice neutral.

"Funny sort of weather patterns," Ianto said, calling up one of Tosh's climate trackers. Jack studied it.

"Weird," he said. "Microclimates?"

"Could be," Ianto answered.

"I'll put Tosh and Gwen on it when they come in," Jack said, but he had a bad feeling that the weather patterns and a nightmare about a slaughter in 1909 were not coincidental to each other. "Good work. Why are you here?"

Ianto kept working as he spoke, recording screenshots and readings to Tosh's shared folder. "Meant to get up and go for a run. Then I...put on a suit, and came here instead. Didn't mean to. Just sort of happened."

"You're not back yet."

"You said two weeks wasn't enough. Two and a half weeks seems like cheating," Ianto replied, head bent to his work. "But so long as I was here, I thought, may as well..."

"Yeah," Jack agreed.

"Should I go?" Ianto looked up at him. "I don't...think I want to."

Jack shook his head. "Stay for now. We'll see what the weather patterns are, do a briefing, send you home then." He bit his lip. "How's the sofa?"

"Very comfortable," Ianto said, with a hint of humour.

The others were hesitantly happy to see Ianto again; Gwen gave him a hug and Tosh kissed his cheek, and Owen grumbled about paid vacations but didn't actually antagonise him to his face, which some days was all one could hope for from Owen. Jack put Tosh onto the weather patterns, left Owen to his own devices in the morgue, saw Ianto was entertaining himself with minor repairs to the Hub, and took Gwen with him to see Estelle about the fairies.

Once they knew what they were dealing with, he had little time to worry about his stray lamb; he sent Ianto home, said to call if he had troubles, and went off to battle the fairies.

After they'd fought and lost, after Jack had given a child to the care of hellish, all-powerful nightmare creatures, Owen and Tosh went home (not together, more the pity) and Gwen lingered in the Hub only long enough to pack her things and close the file. None of them would speak to him or look at him, even. Jack was accustomed to the quiet of the Hub, but he wasn't accustomed to finding it lonely.

He was sitting at his desk, boots off, feet propped up, when the phone rang.

"Ianto," he said, answering it.

"Good guess," Ianto replied, down the line.

"Now's not really a great time."

"Gwen came to see me," Ianto said, and Jack sat forward.

"If you called to tell me you're not speaking to me either, you might as well have just come down and punched me in the face," Jack said tiredly.

"No," Ianto's voice held a trace of amusement. "She told me they'd closed the case, told me about what happened. I thought you might like dinner."

Jack opened his mouth and then realised what Ianto had said. "Uh."

"Just a thought..." Ianto trailed off uncertainly.

"Sorry, I wasn't expecting to be well-liked enough for dinner offers at the moment," Jack said, and then rubbed his eyes. "Ianto, if this is conditioning -- "

"No. At least, I think not. Doesn't taste like it."

"Okay, then." Jack exhaled. "Dinner would be great."

Great, perhaps not, but it was pleasant at least; Ianto had a few questions about the case, but mostly touching on the nature of the creatures rather than what Jack had done, for which Jack found he was grateful. Ianto talked about himself, too, about meeting the people down the street who had a new baby, talking to a bloke walking his dog, ordinary things that were not actually ordinary for either one of them. He said he was sorry about Estelle, which no-one had, not even Gwen.

Jack gave him a lift home, since he'd already burned up his Big Drink allowance for a couple of months at least, and Ianto had ordered a pint with dinner. It was an excuse, he thought, to prolong the evening, but Ianto didn't seem to mind.

When he pulled up outside Ianto's house, he was just turning to make a quip about dinner when Ianto leaned across the gearshift and kissed him.

The kiss _was_ great, and Jack was really starting to enjoy it right when his admittedly erratic good sense kicked in. He pushed Ianto back, held him there with a hand, and got some eye contact.

"No, I don't think so," he said gently. Ianto's eyes were wide, but he recovered a smile.

"So you're all talk, is that -- "

"Ianto," Jack pulled his hand back. "Do you even know what you're doing?"

The smile fell away, and Ianto turned his head slightly. "You just looked like...I dunno." He rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I dunno, Jack."

"Was that programmed?"

"I don't _know._ " Ianto glanced back at him. "Sometimes I want to -- fix things. Sometimes I just want something, and I don't know if it's me or her. Christ, it was easier when...at least I knew, then."

"If you don't know, then this isn't the time," Jack said. "You're not sure, I can't take that risk. I did too much damage already."

Ianto snorted, but Jack saw more pain than derision in his face. "You did damage. _You._ "

"To you? Yeah, Ianto. I did."

Ianto was silent for a while. "So. No. For me, always no. Is that it?"

"For you, it's more complicated than that. For you, the answer is: solve your own problems before you solve mine," Jack said. "I'm a big boy, Ianto, I've been through worse than Gwen being mad at me. Work yourself out, figure out what you really want."

Ianto nodded, face turned away in profile but eyes darting back to him.

"Now. Are you okay?" Jack asked.

"Yeah. Fine." Ianto reached for his seatbelt, fumbling with the buckle.

"You want me to come in with you?"

Ianto shook his head, finally getting the belt undone. "I think that would be -- stupid."

"You sure?" Jack asked. "Look, I know you have no evidence of this but I do actually have enough self-control for both of us."

That got him a little smile. He smiled back.

"I'm fine," Ianto said. He looked like he almost believed it.

"Okay. I'll see you in a few days," Jack said. He let Ianto out of the car and made sure he was inside, then rested his forehead against the steering wheel for a few seconds, calming himself.

That kid was going to be the death of him.


	4. Chapter 4

Ianto didn't call him again for a week, which could have been considered progress but also made Jack uneasy, given how they'd left things. Finally, when a report came across his desk of mysterious deaths outside Cardiff, he took matters into his own hands.

"How would you like to go camping?" he asked, when Ianto answered his phone.

There was a long pause. "With you?" Ianto said warily.

"With Torchwood. We're going on an extended field mission. We could use your skills," Jack said. "Brecon Beacons. Fresh country air, camp food, huddling around a fire at night -- "

"Freezing temperatures, no mobile reception, Owen bitching," Ianto replied. Jack laughed.

"Come on. Just one mission. It'll be a cake walk. If you don't think you're ready, you can go back on leave afterward."

"I'll...wear my hiking boots," Ianto said.

"Great. We'll pick you up on our way out tomorrow morning. Your place at seven," Jack said, and hung up.

Ianto was waiting at the garden gate at seven, a pack slung on his back, in sensible camping gear -- jeans, a warm jacket, and the hiking boots that Jack thought he'd been joking about. He saw Gwen squeeze Ianto's knee and smile at him after he climbed in.

Jack had to admit that part of his motivation was not the kindest impulse in the world; outside of his comfort zone and trapped with his teammates in the woods, Ianto would either sink or swim. A final exam, of sorts -- soonish, perhaps, but necessary nonetheless. They were off to a good start. Ianto had predicted Owen's constant litany of complaints on the trip out, and was tolerating them well.

Then came the cannibals, and Jack began to rethink his essential relationship with the universe.

He was used to getting screwed by circumstances, but he didn't actually make plans this detailed very often and he thought someone up there might have cut him a break, if only for Ianto's sake. Maybe they had both kicked kittens in a previous life or something. Still, all was not lost. Before the terrifying experience of finding a butcher's shop where a village used to be, Ianto had actually been doing very well.

Once everyone was checked over for life-threatening injuries, Jack packed them back into the SUV and started for home. He'd wanted to send Tosh in an ambulance, at least, but she didn't seem to want to be parted from the others, which he could understand. She was curled up against Gwen's good side, in the back, Owen on the other side to make sure Gwen didn't tear a stitch or fuss with her bandages on the way. That left Jack driving and Ianto riding shotgun, which was just as well, because Jack could keep an eye on him there.

By the time they left the park, Tosh and Gwen were both asleep; Owen pointedly had his headphones in, the music loud enough for Jack to hear tinny echoes of it without ever catching what the songs were.

He glanced at Ianto. "You doing okay?"

Ianto had been staring out the windscreen, fiddling with his jacket-cuffs absently. He had a bruise on his cheekbone and smelled like an abattoir, but his eyes were clear.

"Yep," he said, with a quick smile.

"Good." Jack focused on the road. "This was a little more intense than I planned."

Ianto grunted, and then opened his mouth as if to speak. Jack made sure he was genuinely pausing, then let him take his time.

"I know," Ianto said slowly, "that this is not my fault."

"But?"

"But sometimes you do feel like...that kind of thing...is a punishment for some petty spiteful thing you did," Ianto said.

Jack chuckled. "It's nicer to think that the world is out specifically to get us than to think fate's just a bastard. This is about Gwen's who've-you-snogged game, isn't it?"

Ianto nodded. "It _was_ spiteful. What I did."

"Well..." Jack shrugged. "Maybe a little. It was rude to Gwen, disproportionate to the offence. Objectively, in context, I was glad you did it."

Ianto looked at him sharply.

"You deliberately drew attention to yourself, without any other motive than hurt feelings," Jack said. "That's good. You're not trying to please. Not all the time, anyway. That's progress."

"Oh," Ianto said. He seemed to be considering it. "Yeah. Good."

"I'm a little less pleased with what you did for Tosh," Jack added. "Not that I'm not glad she's safe, but..."

"She told you." Ianto said.

"Yeah."

"Do we need to talk about it?" Ianto asked wearily.

"Yep," Jack said, finally getting off the park backroads and onto the bypass that would take them back to Cardiff. "I need to know if it was conditioning."

"Of course," Ianto said, seemingly to himself. "Of course you need to know."

"Can you tell me? If you're a danger to yourself in the field..."

Ianto looked down at his hands for a while. Jack waited patiently.

"Does it matter?" Ianto asked finally.

"Yeah, it does -- "

"No, I mean...there comes a point..." Ianto gave him a frustrated look. "I can't tell. I was scared. Tosh tell you I shouted at her?"

Jack shook his head.

"Well, I did, and that's...I don't know if that's who I am now. But..." Ianto shrugged. "What I did, getting Tosh away, it was still the best thing. The most sensible. Get one of us out of there. I thought I might get out too."

"And if you didn't?" Jack asked. Ianto was silent. "Do you want to die?"

"Once in a while. It's..." Ianto struggled with the words. "I'm all right. Most of the time. When I'm not, it's not conditioning or Torchwood or anything. It's...grief. I'm grieving, Jack."

"Lisa," Jack said softly.

"I miss Lisa. Every day. I miss my friends, too. I can't even think about Lisa or the others without seeing _her_. So I don't, and that makes it hard. I'm not going to top myself, you know," he added, with a dry little smile.

"I didn't, actually. I'm glad to hear it," Jack said. "So...are you coming back?"

Ianto nodded. "How much worse can it get than that?" he asked.

Jack concentrated on driving, and didn't reply.

***

For this interview, there is no record; no film, no tape, not even any notes. Jack told his keepers at Torchwood that this was the Brigadier's condition, and they accepted it readily enough. They weren't willing to tangle with UNIT, which in the late sixties had more power than Torchwood, if also more accountability. If he had asked to record it, the Brigadier probably would have said no, so it was all one in the end.

Instead there is only Jack's memory. An out-of-the-way bar in London, a man who looks like he should be in uniform but isn't, and Jack lighting a cigarette, offering one to the Brigadier.

"No, thank you," he says, waving the cigarette away. "Decreases lung capacity."

"Gotta stay fighting fit," Jack agrees, but tucks his cigarette between his own lips anyway.

"You don't seem overly concerned."

"Well, they haven't killed me yet," Jack tells him, which is true. Many, many other things have, but cigarettes take too much time. He always dies of something else first. "Thanks for coming."

"Always happy to liaise with Torchwood." It's almost too good a line to resist, but Jack does. "I was surprised no-one asked for an official briefing."

"I don't think you were _very_ surprised," Jack tells him. The Brigadier raises an eyebrow. "I think you know Torchwood's after the Doctor, and I think you're protecting him."

"Of all the insolent -- " the Brigadier starts.

"Relax. So am I," Jack says. The other man's impatient, angry expression fades.

"You know the Doctor," he says, with a sort of longing that Jack understands all too well.

"Yeah," Jack agrees. He has to be cautious, cautious here; walk around what he wants to know, pretend that it's not really what he wants. "But I'm more interested in the Cybermen right now."

"There isn't all that much to tell," the Brigadier says. "They were using Tobias Vaughn as a beach-head to establish a long-range communications network capable of enslaving humanity."

Jack chuckles, blowing smoke through his nostrils. "Is that all. Vaughn, he was the head of International Electromatics? I thought he committed suicide."

"Well, we can't very well go round saying he was murdered by invading alien robots, can we?" the Brigadier asks.

"Yeah, but why suicide?"

"Why not? It makes the story easier. Tobias Vaughn finds out there's a dangerous electrical fault in every single chip International Electromatics put on the market, after a disastrous event in which anyone anywhere near a machine containing one drops unconscious. I'm sure you remember _that_." The Brigadier leans back, cradling his drink in his hands. "He tops himself, and the company recalls all its components. What would you have done?"

"Same thing," Jack admits. "So all those little doodads and whatnots, everything with an Electromatic component in it -- "

"Was part of a plan to enslave the world. Turn us all into Cybermen, with Vaughn as the sole surviving member of the human race. Except," the Brigadier pauses for a sip, "he found out they weren't going to play it that way. We do owe him this, when he heard he was going to be turned into one of them he changed sides rather quickly. Instrumental in helping us put down the pre-invasion forces."

"Cybermen, here on Earth?"

"Skies and sewers. They were going to come from above and below. The Russians managed to take out the ship," the Brigadier lifts his glass. "To Russian ingenuity."

Jack toasts him.

***

Jack didn't ever remember seeing Alex or Dominic or Cindy or Gerald or any of the other bosses he'd had at Torchwood work this damn hard to keep the troops in line. He wondered if they'd just hidden how much effort it was, or if they had some secret that Alex had neglected to pass on to him before he blew his brains out. Maybe there was a mind-control ray in the archives. On the days he felt least competent as a boss, he considered looking for one.

He had failed Suzie and Ianto. He could live with that, because at least Ianto was back among them and seemed to be struggling but surviving. Jack clung to the little team he'd built as a measure of his own success: he had saved Toshiko from prison and Owen from -- well, suicide of one sort or another, probably intentional, possibly via alcohol poisoning. He had enticed Gwen into joining them and Gwen seemed to see something in Jack he didn't quite know he'd had. He felt all in all he was working on being a good manager, something he'd had to learn fast and without much guidance.

The problem was that as soon as he got one of his kids lined up, the others seemed to scatter. Ianto was not exactly a ray of sunshine, but he worked hard and he smiled when he saw Jack looking and if he still had an occasional moment where brain and programming collided, they were few and usually not very public. Jack could count on the fingers of one hand the times he'd seen Ianto close his eyes and draw breath, a sign he was stopping himself from something. There hadn't been another incident like the kiss in the car since, well, the kiss in the car.

Now that Ianto was back in step, however, Owen and Gwen fired up an affair that Jack really could have lived without. He was all in favour of sex and he was sure it was scrappy, passionate, interesting sex, but Owen wasn't exactly boyfriend material and Gwen already had one anyway. Jack didn't interfere -- perhaps they were just blowing off steam -- but he had to keep a close eye on it. Which was (at least, he hoped) the reason he didn't see Tosh slipping when he should have.

The thing was, even later, when he thought about it, he didn't see how he could have noticed any earlier. Tosh was her usual quiet, workaholic self, and that in itself was troubling. When he'd brought her to Torchwood from UNIT she'd been defiant but scared -- only Owen and Jack knew how far Tosh had come from what she had been, and Owen had never paid Tosh much mind. So maybe Tosh was much better than she'd been, but still...quiet. That was just the way Tosh _was_.

He felt kind of crap about killing Mary, even if she deserved it. He had now officially killed two of his employees' girlfriends. Frankly, if this kept up, it was going to start looking like spite. On the other hand, what was it with Torchwood agents hooking up with evil on legs?

That probably wasn't very fair, but Jack was tired after talking with Toshiko -- _thanks, Tosh, glad you couldn't get into my brain because I'm spiritually dead_ \-- and frustrated with the world. He was beginning to understand old men who complained about the glory days and despaired of their grandchildren's intelligence. Sometimes you couldn't help but look back on all your mistakes and wonder if everyone else was going to have to make them too before they'd listen to you.

After he killed Mary, Gwen and Owen had slunk away in opposite directions. No need to wonder what Tosh had heard from them. Jack was, apparently, emotionally frigid and inaccessible to his subordinates.

Which just left Ianto, who was currently clattering around on the far side of the Hub, making coffee. This did mean Jack was about to get a cup of delicious coffee and maybe, if he were lucky, a biscuit.

_What did she hear from you, I wonder_ , he thought, turning to glance through the glass siding of his office as Ianto made his way across the fountain pool. He tipped his chair forward and began shuffling papers as if he were doing something important. It was always good to look busy when the underlings approached.

Coffee and two biscuits, the good kind with the chocolate. Jack beamed at Ianto gratefully.

"Long day," Ianto said, setting the coffee down in front of him. "Thought you could use something hot."

"Hmm," Jack said, lifting the coffee from the saucer and sipping cautiously. "Industrial grade. Thanks."

"Well, if you _like_ drinking motor oil I can't stop you," Ianto replied. "Anything else, sir?"

"Going home?" Jack asked.

"Couple of reports to assemble first," Ianto said. "Duty roster for tomorrow."

"Yeah? Run it past me," Jack said, finding that once again he was reluctant to be in the Hub alone. He could recognise the upswing and downswing now, after a hundred years of this, and knew it would pass -- but if there was company on offer, why not take advantage of it?

Ianto sat in the chair across from his desk, smoothing his cuffs idly. "Barring emergencies, Owen has a backlog that's been building for a week," he said, quirking an eyebrow at Jack. "Gwen's reports are in order but she's due for her weekly incoming audit -- UNIT, local police, local military reports. She's good at information-picking. I thought I might lend her a hand. Tosh..." he tilted his head. "Is she on leave?"

"Nope. She should have that list for UNIT I've been badgering her about, tomorrow," Jack said.

"In that case, she'll probably have it for you early. Michael Hamilton's been calling the police again, perhaps she'd like to test-drive some new equipment," Ianto suggested. "If Gwen gives me a head start on the audit, she could go along."

"Hamilton, Hamilton -- " Jack narrowed his eyes. "The nutbar who thinks Cybermen are stalking his mother?"

Ianto's face was impassive. "The very nutbar."

"Hm. We've been over him and his mother's house and the surrounding area pretty closely, right?"

Ianto plucked a folder from the rack to the left of Jack's desk, running a finger down the inside cover. "Three times. During the initial report he was cleared and retconned. The second time was..."

He frowned.

"I wasn't here for the second investigation," he said delicately. Jack held out his hand for the file and Ianto passed it over. "Third time was to investigate whether or not the Retcon was functioning. Turns out even without his memories, he still sees them, so it's likely either trauma from an initial incident or he really is seeing Cybermen in his mum's drive or, well, he's a nutbar."

Jack studied the file, nodding. "Okay. Send Tosh after it tomorrow, have her check for Rift activity as well. Could be a thin point between universes."

"Yup," Ianto said, accepting the folder back again and setting it in his lap. "You have a call with the mayor at nine and lunch with a defence lobbyist at noon."

"A what now?" Jack asked.

"Someone's got it into his head that you have pull with the MoD," Ianto said. "They must be desperate, but it's free lunch, so..."

Jack grinned. "Is he cute?"

"I wouldn't presume to judge." Ianto put his palms flat on the arms of the chair, preparing to push himself upright. Jack pointed at him with the second biscuit, and he paused.

"You talk to Tosh?" Jack asked.

"Debriefed her," Ianto said, perplexed. "You told me to."

"But did you talk to her?" Jack persisted.

"Yes, we exchanged grooming tips," Ianto drawled. "She wasn't talkative, Jack. Understandable given the circumstances. Why?"

"Gwen and Owen were pumping her about what she heard them thinking," Jack said, nibbling on the biscuit. "I asked her if she heard me, too. You didn't ask?"

Ianto shook his head.

"Aren't you curious?"

He seemed to consider it for the first time. "We haven't seen much of each other in the past few days. I didn't think about it."

"Honestly?"

"I suppose I don't think mental shopping lists and updates to your schedule are all that interesting to other people. She didn't mention anything."

"She did to me. Briefly," Jack said. "Enough that I know she heard something. Come on, Ianto, your life can't be that blameless. Isn't it going through your head, all the secrets she might know?"

Ianto smiled. "Like when you see a policeman on the street and immediately list off all the things you could be in trouble for."

"Do you do that?" Jack asked, fascinated.

"Everyone does that," Ianto answered.

"I don't," Jack said. "That'd be a really long list." He realised Ianto had neatly deflected the question, and refocused. "So you have no problem with Tosh, whatever she knows?"

Ianto looked down. "I can make a guess," he said, smoothing one corner of the file folder unnecessarily.

"Ianto."

The young man looked up. "Some days are easier than others."

"And?"

"And yesterday was not. Some days everything hurts," Ianto said with an indifferent shrug. Jack wanted to touch him -- something, anything to anchor him here, to reassure him -- but they Didn't Go There, did they. "I took the police call about Hamilton and the Cybermen. That wasn't very pleasant. I could feel my brain..." he made a frustrated noise. "I could feel things wanting to happen. I wanted to _defend_ them. Screwed up, you know?" he said.

"But you didn't."

"Score one for team Torchwood. We're losing on girlfriends," Ianto said, and Jack burst out laughing.

"God, I'm so glad I'm not the only one thinking that," Jack said, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling. "I felt like a really bad person." He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his desk. "You sound like you're...processing things. Getting sorted."

Ianto nodded.

"You know if you..." Jack tried to consider how to phrase this without it sounding like he wanted Ianto sacked. "I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to work here," he said. "It can't be easy."

"Nothing would be. Besides, my marketable skills are narrowly targeted," Ianto said. "Realistically, though...I could go back to Newport, maybe stay with my sister, and then what? _What you need, Ianto, is to stop moping_ ," he said, his accent thickening, pitch raising a little to imitate a woman's. Jack grinned. " _You need to find a nice girl and get a good job and settle down. Might be some building work coming, you know._ As if I could go back to that, after Torchwood," he added with disgust.

"Construction?" Jack asked.

"Rhiannon mothering me to death. She's got two kids of her own now, let her mother them," Ianto said. "Finding a nice girl and getting a nice job and going drinking down the pub every night, footie on the weekends, kids and all the rest of it."

"That...actually sounds kind of great," Jack pointed out.

"For normal people. It'd feel dishonest, after what I've seen. What I've done," Ianto said. "There's not many would do what we do. If I can, I should. I help because I want to help, Jack, me, not a program in my head. I want to help."

"Okay, okay," Jack said, over the rise in Ianto's voice. "Easy. I'm not going to fire you. I just had to be sure."

Ianto nodded, blushing a little at his reaction. Jack studied him.

"Keep an eye on Tosh tomorrow," he said finally. "Help her out if you can. I won't send you out on the Hamilton case, but make sure she doesn't feel neglected. I think you'd both find that helpful."

"Yes, sir," Ianto said, rising from his chair. "I'll be working for another hour. Call if you need anything."

Jack nodded and sipped his coffee. He watched Ianto leave, then turned back to his computer to check the earlier database reports on the Hamilton Cyberman sightings.

An hour later he heard the cage alarms go and the roll-door open; he looked up just in time to see Ianto slipping out, pulling his coat on as he went. Ianto caught his eye for a second -- checking on the boss, Jack supposed -- and then was gone.

***

The next morning, everything seemed to be stable, if not exactly _smooth_. Owen and Gwen were sticking to opposite sides of the Hub, though they kept casting glances at each other. It was cute, in a "you guys are going to get in so much shit for this eventually" kind of way. Tosh looked like she hadn't slept much, and had possibly been crying, but she was there and working. Jack caught Ianto leaning on the opposite side of her desk at one point, talking to her; Ianto made some kind of joke and Tosh smiled, which was something. Actually, Ianto and Tosh wouldn't make a bad couple.

Jack was indulging in a bit of inner cinema revolving around this concept, including a riding crop and some various leather accents -- just as well Tosh couldn't read his mind, since Jack's inner cinema was more or less constant and he tended to use whatever talent was at hand -- when he saw Gwen and Tosh heading for the roll-door, and heard Ianto shout their names.

His senses picked up immediately, and he saw Owen's head pop up from the medical bay. Shouting usually meant sudden emergencies. Ianto was bolting across the Hub, two silver objects in his hands, and skidding to a stop at the top of the stairs.

"Coffee," he said, and Jack relaxed. The objects he was carrying were thermal travel-mugs. "Nasty weather today."

"Thank you, Ianto," Tosh said, sounding surprised.

"Ta," Gwen beamed, patting his arm as she took hers. "Much appreciated, Ianto."

Ianto gave them both a ready smile, stepping away as the cage doors swung open.

"Kiss-arse," Jack heard Owen mutter.

"Wrong ass, in that case," Jack replied. There was a slightly sheepish silence from Owen's direction. Jack got up and came down to the railing of the medical bay, leaning on it and watching as Owen teased apart a fist-sized mass of green pulp with a pair of scalpels.

"Having fun?" he asked.

"I am, actually," Owen said. "Lot of interesting layers to this. I'm hoping when I get to the centre there'll be a prize."

Jack didn't have the heart to tell him that he was dissecting an alien cabbage, and at the centre was a pocket of pollen that smelled almost exactly like the floor of a Venusian dive bar. For one, he'd have to explain how he knew what the floor of a Venusian dive bar smelled like, and that was a really embarrassing story.

He turned around and leaned back on the railing, surveying his Hub, all drippy fountain and rust-stained walls and glowing, beeping tech. He found it good. He waved at Ianto as he passed, then made a thumbs-up, thumbs-down gesture, raising his eyebrows. Ianto stopped, apparently confused, and then realised what he was asking; he held his hand up flat and wavered it.

_Good day? Bad day?_

_I'm surviving._

Satisfied, Jack went back to his office to enjoy a bit more Jack Harkness Mental Cinema while he reviewed a report from UNIT that Gwen had tagged for him, about strange lights in the sky over Scotland.

***

Sometimes Jack wishes he could remember more. He measures his memory against the records in Torchwood and never finds it especially wanting -- but then, he has the records to reinforce them. He wonders if he even remembers properly what was said when he met with Lethbridge-Stewart; he wonders sometimes why his memories seem washed out, as if he's mixed them up with too many old films and he thinks people actually _were_ in monochrome at one time.

He remembers stubbing out the cigarette, an ember flicking up to burn the pad of his finger, before he leans back to prompt the Brigadier. "So the Russians knocked them out of the sky."

"And we took care of the ground forces."

"You, meaning UNIT. And the Doctor," Jack says. As much as he's going to be lauded for getting this intel out of UNIT, he's not really interested in the Cybermen.

"Yes. He was instrumental, I suppose, though he's rubbish at military strategy naturally," the Brigadier seems -- pleased with this, almost. As if he knows that the Doctor, should he choose, would be far and away beyond any human military commander who ever lived. And is glad the Doctor chooses otherwise.

Jack toys with his glass. "Torchwood has reports, you know, about the Cybermen. We think they can control people's minds."

"That's because they can. We devised a workaround."

"Oh?"

"The Doctor did, actually. He designed a sort of patch, worn at the back of the neck, which prevented my men from falling under control of the Cybermen. After that it was a lot of grenades. Lot of surveying the sewers, weeks of that. The Doctor was long gone by then, mind you."

"Just him?"

"No, he had two young people with him. I think he must like matched sets," the Brigadier says, faintly amused by the idea. "The first time we met, it was a young Scots lad, McCrimmon, and a girl named Victoria, rather useless, but smart in her own way."

Jack thinks about Victoria Waterfield. He'd interrogated her for weeks. His estimation of her is higher than the Brigadier's.

"The second time, they'd picked up a new girl instead. Zoe. Something of a prodigy, was sorry to see her go."

Jack knows a fair bit about James McCrimmon, but his file on Zoe is much thinner. Still, he edges around the question again.

"What did the Doctor think of the Cybermen?"

The Brigadier sets his glass on the table, leaning forward. "He seemed...tired of them. I had the sense he'd tangled with them before, perhaps more than once. He seemed to feel that there were...well, one would call them evils, I suppose, that could never be fully vanquished."

Jack studies his glass. "What do you think?"

"We ought to try anyway. Don't you agree?"

Jack likes the Brigadier, genuinely likes him. He's going to be sorry when he slips him a Retcon tab in his next drink.

"Yeah," he says. "I do. So tell me more about this Zoe kid."

***

Jack expected Gwen and Tosh to be back by the time he returned from his lunch with the Mysterious Defence Lobbyist, but that didn't last as long as he expected; the man seemed to think Jack wasn't old enough to be _the_ Captain Jack Harkness, and had treated him with a sort of "Sorry your dad sent you out here" condescension only achieved by a certain kind of man at a certain age and position in life. It would have been annoying to the thirty-something man Jack resembled; given he was pushing a hundred and eighty, it was basically just permission for Jack to innuendo his way through the conversation until the man grew so uncomfortable he left without dessert. Gerald Carter had always said small pleasures entertained small minds, but Jack knew small pleasures were the guardians of sanity.

He heard Tosh and Gwen coming in from the underground garage as he descended the stairs; he picked up the pace a little as their voices echoed up to him.

" -- something we can do for the poor man," Gwen was saying, as they entered.

"If you can think of something, feel free," Tosh replied, mostly without heat, but he could hear a faint tinge of _this, again?_ in her voice.

"Well, that's the problem, isn't it? What to do," Gwen agreed.

"When in doubt, I usually ask the boss," Jack said, joining them at the bottom of the stairs. Both looked startled. Enigmatic entrances were the best. "I take it you didn't find any Cybermen lurking in Ma Hamilton's bushes."

"No," Gwen said, looking almost disappointed. "But her son really does seem like he's at the end of his rope, Jack."

"Not much we can do about it," Jack shrugged. "If he's crazy, I'm sorry, I really am, but I'm not a therapist."

"I wonder if it's a prank of some kind," Tosh said, swiping her keycard. The rolldoor slid back with a groan, and the entry alerts sounded. "You know. Students or something."

"Running around in Cyberman suits?" Gwen asked dubiously.

"Still a possibility. Put local police onto the idea," Jack told Gwen. "See if they turn anything up. Tosh, can you get a CCTV camera installed nearby?"

"Shouldn't be hard," Tosh said, sitting down at her desk and bringing up the Home Office intranet.

"In that case, get the name of the officer in charge of the investigation once it's underway, route Hamilton's calls back to them. Tosh, have Mainframe keep an eye on it," Jack said. Gwen was already on the telephone to the police. Jack rubbed his hands together, pleased with a tidy resolution that wasn't going to waste any more of their time, and went to see if coffee was on offer.

Ianto wasn't at his worktable, and as far as Jack could tell he wasn't doing one of his frequent rounds of the Hub. It wasn't feeding time; that probably meant the archives.

The potential stupidity of unleashing Ianto on an underground warehouse full of alien tech wasn't lost on Jack. As Suzie had recently and suicidally proved, the tech in itself was dangerous. Besides, while Jack didn't think Ianto was going to kill them all in their sleep or that he still had any harmful conditioning, he had to admit both were possible. On the other hand, Jack didn't have time for the Archives, Owen and Gwen weren't meticulous enough, and Tosh's skills would be wasted there. Maybe they should hire a librarian or something.

He was halfway through the door to the archives when he realised he'd walked right past Ianto, standing at the bank of monitors near the entry. Usually only Tosh was allowed to touch that station; it had one of the fastest, biggest processors in the Hub hooked up to it, and Tosh used it for calibrating her Rift-prediction calculations. Ianto was studying the topmost screen intently as the bottom two screens ran through equations faster than the eye could read, compiling.

"Using a calculator is cheating," Jack said. Ianto glanced at him with a small smile. "Tosh'll be annoyed if she finds you messing around with this."

"I asked permission," Ianto said smoothly, pausing the left screen. He removed a random chart from one corner and input a different one. Google Maps popped up on the right-hand screen.

"What're you doing?" Jack asked.

"Testing a theory," Ianto said, tapping a few keys. The calculations began again. "Cybermen aren't...subtle," he added, looking down at his fingers that rested idle on the keyboard. Jack waited patiently. "They don't peep out from behind a tree and then run away again. They need, they _use_ people. They needed Torchwood to break through. She needed -- me," he added. He was staring at the chart on the upper screen, unblinking. "If they were there we'd have found them by now."

"So...?" Jack prompted softly, resting a hand in the small of Ianto's back, just something to steady him. Ianto didn't notice, or maybe was trying not to.

"If they're real, but they aren't there, then they're...not-there," Ianto said, as if he were working out how to say what he wanted to say. "Ghosts. Like -- "

"In London," Jack finished for him. Ianto nodded. He still hadn't looked away from the screen.

"No Rift activity in the area, but then there never was," Ianto murmured. "I thought -- weather patterns, low-level background Rift noise, the stuff that's always there...maybe something would come up strange."

"Getting any results?"

"Not yet," Ianto said. There was a frustrated edge to his voice, but Jack suspected it wasn't for him.

"Take it to Tosh," he said. "Get her to have a look. She'll probably have a few ideas."

"No, I -- " Ianto paused, and finally looked at Jack. "Yes. Sorry, I forgot. I forgot I could do that."

Jack ran his hand up along Ianto's spine, sleek waistcoat and solid warmth beneath. He gripped Ianto's neck lightly, then let him go.

"It's a good idea," he said. "Get on it. But first..." he gave Ianto a pleading grin. "Coffee?"

"Yup," Ianto said, closing down the compiler. He turned away from the monitors -- into Jack, for just a second, the cuff of his shirt brushing Jack's wrist. Jack inhaled to say something he'd probably regret, but Ianto was already up the steps to the atrium, heading towards the coffee machine.

***

That night, just as Jack was drifting off to sleep, the Rift alarm went.

He was up in an instant, dressing as he checked the readout, and half an hour later everyone was huddled in the drizzle in the middle of Millennium Stadium, where the Rift had dropped thirty live alien fish in the middle of the turf. (Thirty-two, actually; Ianto kept count as they loaded them into buckets.)

Ten minutes later, it dumped a dead Hoix into someone's backyard. The cops were annoyed when Jack and Tosh showed up. Tosh wasn't much happier.

Forty minutes after that, it was a live Hoix just north of downtown.

Jack took Ianto with him hunting that one down, which was just as well since they were still chasing it around rubbish bins when Gwen reported that she was on the trail of some kind of half-pint robot and Owen said the alien fish were telepathic and he'd had to dump them in the rift pond or face their increasingly noisy mental wrath.

"Tosh, I thought the prediction program was supposed to, you know, predict," Jack said, out of breath, holding out a handful of garbage to try and lure the Hoix past the bin, where Ianto was waiting with the stun gun.

"The calculations aren't perfect, Jack," Tosh replied over his earpiece, sounding aggrivated. "I'm working on it."

In the background, he heard the Rift alert blare again. "What the hell is going on?" he asked.

"I knew it'd been too quiet," Tosh muttered, closing off the channel. The Hoix lunged, Ianto did too, and Jack danced backwards. The stun knocked it sideways but didn't knock it out.

"It's going to be a long night," Jack predicted.

They killed the Hoix eventually and dragged it back to the SUV; dead Hoixes tended to excrete slime, which made both the car and their clothing somewhat fragrant. When they staggered into the Hub under its weight, Tosh already had two more calls for them and was arguing with the police about whether Gwen was, in fact, within her rights to run down a robot (for politeness' sake, everyone agreed it was "some kind of wild animal") with a police vehicle. Owen was busy negotiating a treaty with the alien fish.

The calls were simple retrievals of inert tech, made more complicated by the rain and the dark. Light dawned just as they returned to the Hub, and Jack shed his incredibly rotten-smelling clothing in a trail across his office, hurrying down to his private shower before anyone could stop him. When he came up again, in fresh clothing, he found Ianto in a t-shirt and a pair of Jack's trousers, asleep on the sofa. Tosh was head-down next to her keyboard.

"Gwen's got the SUV," Owen told him, carrying a bucket in each hand.

"For what?" Jack asked wearily.

"Fish," Owen said, indicating the buckets. "Tosh says there's a light cruiser making orbit in two hours, and they've agreed to ship the fish back to their home....tank. Got to get them to the rendezvous point at the airport."

Jack waved him on and Owen trudged away with his buckets.

It went on like that for the rest of the day and well into the night; Tosh managed to work out that there was a fault splitting open and, while it wasn't dangerous or likely to last very long, it kept them on their feet until the next morning. Gwen's boyfriend was texting her every hour, Owen was looking sour and pinched, Tosh was getting that guilty "I should have known about this even though there's no possible way I could have" look, and Ianto, whose movements had begun to take on the precision of someone who knows they haven't had enough sleep, was still wearing Jack's trousers.

Jack himself hadn't slept at all in two days. When he caught a look at himself in the reflection of one of Tosh's screens, he could see his hair was sticking out in tufts. Probably from that last wrestling match with an angry Noothi, a Rift special-delivery who despite not actually being sentient clearly did not want to be put in the cells. Noothi were about the size and intelligence of cats, and just as obnoxious.

It took him a second to register what Tosh was saying.

"Come again?" he asked.

"Look, I can't be a hundred percent positive, but we haven't had any new dumps for nearly two hours," Tosh repeated, pointing to the screen. Jack squinted at it. "I know this is a _bit_ untrustworthy just now, but I think we'll have some quiet for at least a day or two."

"Great," Jack said. "Okay. Uh. Thank you, Tosh, you did great," he clapped her on the shoulder, "and I am going to bed. Everybody out. Gwen, I'll send your boyfriend flowers. Owen, I said home, not a pub, it's nine in the morning. Toshiko, if I have to turn that computer off to get you out of here, I will. Ianto!" he yelled. There was a clatter from the general direction of the coffee machine. "Stop injecting caffeine straight into your veins and go home. And I want those trousers back."

"Right now?" Ianto asked, making his way across the fountain pool.

"Eventually," Jack said. Gwen was already out the door, Owen not far behind her; Tosh was still flipping switches, shutting things down, setting alarms. Ianto gathered up a bag from just inside the door to Jack's office.

"Dry-cleaning," he said, holding it up. "I'll drop it off on my way home."

"Sleep first," Jack ordered. "Drop it off on your way in after you've had at least five hours. Tosh, five hours, you hear me?"

"Yes, Jack," she said with a faint smile. "Come on Ianto, let him hiberna -- "

The computer beeped. Jack wanted to cry.

"Rift?" he asked, as Ianto set the bag down and joined Tosh at the one remaining lit-up monitor.

"No..." Tosh peered at it. "Right before the fault opened I set up Ianto's detection program on Hamilton's street. The Cybermen?" she reminded Jack. "It picked something up -- looks like last night, just didn't have time to check it then..."

She called up a video feed of a normal-looking street.

"They got the CCTV camera up fast," Jack remarked.

"Torchwood," Tosh said, faintly self-satisfied. Next to Jack, Ianto seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes open. "Look, this'll only take a minute, we just check the timestamp and -- "

"What was that?" Jack asked, as something zipped across the screen, right-to-left. Tosh stopped the rewind and played it forward.

For a few seconds there was just empty street, a wind-blown tree waving gently in the background. Then a flash of metal, dull on the low-quality camera, and a figure running -- _bounding_ diagonally down the street. It emerged from nowhere and disappeared back into nowhere before it hit the edge of the camera's view.

"That," Ianto said, tension thick in his voice, "was a Cyberman."

"Yes it was," Jack agreed. "Real, but not here...not-here," he said, looking at Ianto, who was now more than wide awake. "You were right."

"I'll call Owen and Gwen," Tosh sighed. Jack stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

"That thing's been playing hide and seek with us for weeks," he said. "Right now we're barely functioning. Go home and get some sleep. I'll stake out the street. Once everyone's had some rest, someone can come and relieve me."

"You've not slept," Ianto pointed out.

"I caught a few minutes here and there," Jack lied. "Got any of that motor oil for me?"

"In the thermos, but -- "

"Go home, both of you. Set your alarms, check in around two. Go," he said, and all but shoved Tosh off her chair, marching her firmly to the door. Ianto followed, like he usually did; Jack got hold of his shoulder and pushed him through behind her, then keyed the door shut. When it didn't immediately open again, he surmised that they'd seen sense and decided to follow his orders.

He rubbed his face tiredly, then went to collect the thermos Ianto had mentioned, a stun gun from the armory, a cleaning kit from his desk, and a handful of granola bars from Owen's secret stash. Just as insurance, he took a box of cartridges for the Webley. Thus equipped, he went to the garage to find the SUV still reeking of dead Hoix and telepathic fish. He sighed, loaded it up, and pulled it out onto the Cardiff streets.

He kept himself awake and reasonably alert, the first hour, by sitting in the SUV down an alley from Mrs. Hamilton's house and meticulously cleaning every inch of the Webley, inspecting each part for wear. The second hour, lukewarm coffee did the trick. Hours three and four were hellish, and he was just starting to catch his second wind on hour five when Gwen knocked on the window and startled him. He hadn't been sleeping. He'd just been closing his eyes for a second.

"Tosh said you needed reinforcements," Gwen said, climbing in. She had a thermos of her own, and two wax-wrapped packages. "Sandwich? Roast beef or turkey?"

"Roast beef," Jack said, accepting it gratefully. Gwen looked at the lid of his thermos, which he'd been using as a mug, sniffed, and dumped it out through the SUV's window, re-filling it with something from her own. It steamed. It had noodles. It smelled like onions and garlic and everything that was right with the world.

"Rhys sent soup," she said. Jack privately blessed Rhys's name. "So, anything yet?"

"Nope," Jack said, sipping the hot soup, then gulping it. "Tosh fill you in?"

"More or less. I hear Ianto was there when she found it. How'd he take it?"

Jack tried to remember. He finally decided that either Ianto was so tired it hadn't registered, or Jack was so tired he could be forgiven for a momentary lapse. "I sent him home to get some sleep."

Gwen gave him a smile. "You look like you could use some yourself."

"Yeah. Okay." Jack set the mug down on the dashboard. "We'll double up rotating. You watch, I sleep. Wake me if something happens. In five hours, call Owen, he'll replace me and you can sleep. Then he'll call for your replacement."

Gwen nodded, and Jack settled himself back in the seat, finally, blissfully closing his eyes.

It felt like no time at all before someone woke him with a gentle tug on his arm; he opened his eyes to see Gwen grinning at him, and was about to ask where Owen was when she climbed across the gearshift and straddled his lap, leaning in for a kiss.

Surprising, but not unwelcome. It didn't really seem like good payback to Rhys for the amazing soup he'd sent, but an armful of warm, affectionate Gwen Cooper, who was apparently very good at getting her shirt off in confined spaces, was --

"Jack. Jack!"

Jack snapped awake with a grunt, jerking forward and almost slamming himself into the steering wheel. Gwen, sitting next to him, put a hand on his arm in concern.

"Nggh," Jack said.

"Sorry," Gwen told him, letting go of his arm. "You were. Erm. Groaning. Bad dreams?"

Jack shook his head to clear it. "Hnh. Yeah," he agreed, because while he wasn't ashamed of having sex dreams about anyone, and if people had any sense they'd take it as a compliment, he didn't think he and Gwen really needed that twenty-first-century awkwardness between them. "Wha' time is it?"

"Coming on seven. Owen should be here any minute."

"Okay." Jack gathered his wits. "Owen's on shift until midnight. Have him call Tosh to relieve you, and then in the morning Tosh can call me."

"What about Iant -- oh," Gwen stopped herself before he could answer her. "No, maybe not smart, huh?"

"I want him in the Hub on this one. If the Rift goes crazy again we need someone there anyway," Jack said.

"That's good. Will he mind much?"

"He'll just have to cope if he does," Jack replied. Before Gwen could answer, Owen knocked on his window, making both of them jump.

Jack left them there with the SUV and drove Owen's car back to the Hub. Tosh wasn't there, but there was evidence she had been; the tech on her desk was rearranged and some half-finished machine was sitting like a gutted animal next to her keyboard. Ianto had been there too; there was a note on his desk that simply read "Fridge" and in the fridge was a tinfoil-and-cardboard tray of his favourite takeaway curry and a slice of chocolate cake. Jack ate it cold, collapsed into his bed with his clothes still on, and fell swiftly asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Nothing happened that night, at least according to Tosh when Jack showed up to relieve Owen at five in the morning. He sent Tosh off too; now that they'd all had at least some rest, he could take an eight-hour shift on his own. No reason to keep two people out in the field, especially since there was a lot of sorting and studying to do back at the Hub.

Stakeouts were boring, which was why Jack normally made everyone else do them. Back when he'd been a subordinate agent, he'd usually tried to ensure he was conveniently absent when that kind of assignment was handed out. You couldn't read, you couldn't play music, you couldn't even get out and walk around much. You just sat and stared at an empty street until your eyes hurt.

Theoretically, sitting here was also pointless. Tosh had a camera on the street and a system set up to alert them when a Cyberman made his appearance. The last one had been so quick that nobody could have stopped the thing if they'd wanted to. On the other hand, if Michael Hamilton had seen one for long enough to know what it was, perhaps the length of their appearances varied.

Jack was in the middle of trying to name all the Sherlock Holmes short stories (by publish date, then interior chronological order) when he saw a car prowling down the street. It was too early to be his relief, and it wasn't Gwen's car -- it was Ianto's, pulling to a stop nearby.

"What happened to Gwen?" Jack asked, as Ianto climbed into the passenger's seat.

"Hello," Ianto said pointedly, and handed him a large bundle wrapped in oilcloth. "She had an encounter with the Noothi. It got loose."

Jack gave him an eyebrow. "How'd that happen?"

"Owen was trying to make friends," Ianto informed him.

"Oh, please tell me you saved the CCTV footage," Jack begged.

"Duplicates on your server space," Ianto told him. "Gwen's out cold -- she'll be fine, just needs some rest -- so Owen sent me to fill in. Tosh sent that for you," he added, indicating the bundle. Jack opened it and found a...device...of some kind nestled inside. It looked like what Tosh had been working on the day before.

"It's just what I've always wanted," he drawled, and Ianto snorted.

"Tosh has a theory," he said, settling in as if he was actually going to stay, and not about to get punted back to the Hub by Jack. "She's checked Rift activity in this area. During the ghost shifts there were a lot of spikes around here. She thinks..." he frowned a little, as if recalling her precise wording, "the displaced quantum energy from the ghost shifts entangled with the molecular traces left by the Rift and created an ongoing trans-dimensional feedback loop."

Jack tilted his head. "The Rift and the Cybermen ran into each other and left their mess behind them."

"That was my impression," Ianto agreed.

"So?" Jack indicated the machine.

"Tosh calibrated a laser to suspend the transdimensional molecular decay," Ianto said, still sounding as if Tosh had drilled him in this. "Should stabilise the feedback loop."

"Thus...freeing...the Cyberman?" Jack asked skeptically.

"Long enough for us to kill it," Ianto replied. His tone was grim. Jack studied him for a moment before responding.

"I was about to tell you to get the hell out of the SUV and go back to the Hub," he said.

"And?" Ianto asked, like a kid daring him to mete out punishment.

"Now I think maybe I'll leave it up to you," Jack said. Ianto glanced at him, looked at the street, back to Jack.

"Shouldn't be too hard," he said. "Killing it, I mean."

"UNIT used to use grenades," Jack said idly. "Handguns don't work very well."

"So..."

Jack reached into one of the cup holders, held up the stun-gun, and waved it cheerfully. "Electrocution. Twice the fun, half the mess."

"Not exactly long-range," Ianto pointed out.

"I'm fast on my feet," Jack told him.

"UNIT...used to?" Ianto asked, turning to him. "Before Canary Wharf?"

Jack realised a tactical error, but backpedaling was pointless; Ianto was, after all, a very methodical man.

"We have records on Cybermen going back to the forties," Jack said, watching Ianto's grip on the arm of the passenger's seat grow tighter. "There's also evidence they were present in London in 1851. Torchwood's never dealt directly with them before. UNIT was always first on scene, always handled it. And we were happy to let them," he added.

"Did London know this?" Ianto asked. It took Jack a minute to realise he meant Torchwood London.

"They had briefings," he said. "They kept a file. Wouldn't have mattered, though, they didn't think the ghosts were Cybermen. You worked for London; if they _had_ known, what do you think they'd have done?"

Ianto turned back to the street. "Rigged a way to bring them over. Planned to round them up and dissect them."

"You think that would have worked?"

"No." Ianto's voice was soft, but the rage bled through.

"Who are you more angry at," Jack said speculatively, not really asking, not really expecting an answer, "the Cybermen for what they did, or London for allowing it to happen?"

He thought Ianto's hand on his wrist was the first step towards Ianto punching him in the face again, but when he looked up Ianto was staring at the road.

"Do you see that?" he asked, nodding at what might be a shimmer off a puddle.

"Yeah," Jack said, picking up the laser Tosh had sent him. He popped the door cautiously and stepped out, staying close to the car, keeping most of his body behind the cab. Ianto, on the other side, was edging along the alley wall, handgun in one hand, stun gun in the other.

Jack realised, too late, that their roles were reversed -- Ianto should have the laser, the long-range, and Jack should have the stun gun, because it wasn't like a Cyberman was going to send him down permanently. _She_ had proved that.

The light in the air was definitely not a glimmer from a puddle. It was expanding, spiking at the edges.

"Ianto," Jack said, voice low, and jerked his head for Ianto to come around. "Swap."

Which was why Ianto was in front of the car, outside of cover, when the Cyberman emerged.

To his credit, Ianto ducked and rolled almost immediately, giving Jack a clear shot with the laser; the Cyberman seemed to phase out of existence in time to dodge the first shot, but Jack's second shot was true, the laser landing square in what would have been its belly, if it had one. It froze briefly -- suddenly seemed _more real_ \--

And Ianto was running forward before Jack could stop him, obviously trying to take advantage of the momentary pause in movement. He shouted for him to stop, and Ianto didn't even glance backwards; the Cyberman, Jack saw, heard the noise. Its head flicked slightly to the left.

Shit.

It raised its arms just as Ianto reached it, not fast enough to defend itself but fast enough to catch Ianto and try to fling him aside. Jack threw the laser down and joined the fight, Ianto clinging to the Cyberman's wrist and shoulder while it tried desperately to shake him off. Jack tried for a speedy impact, ducking and catching it with his shoulder around the waist at full run, and promptly dislocated something.

It did have some effect, though; the Cyberman staggered back on one foot, and Ianto swung his weight around to add to the overbalance. The Cyberman turned, dragging Jack with it as his boots scrabbled for purchase on the wet asphalt, and slammed its foot down firmly, staggering but staying upright. It whipped its body back around and Ianto skidded away, finally shaken free.

Jack pushed again, biting his tongue against the pain that lanced down his body, and they both stumbled backwards. He pushed _up_ , trying to get it off its feet, and it looked down at him with a terrible impassive face.

He heard Ianto's feet on the asphalt, saw him moving out of the corner of his eye. The Cyberman's body crackled. Blue arcs began to leap off its metal skin just as Ianto lunged. Every hair on his body stood on end --

And then nothing. Less than nothing. Nothing would imply he had senses to feel it with, which he didn't. Blackness would mean that the colour existed in the first place. No sense of body, no sense of time. He had no lungs to scream with, and if he did he couldn't have heard it anyway. He couldn't tense against the onslaught of pain, because he had no body. For a moment he was simply pain, all over, horrible dragging pain, pressing up against the not-thereness, until it shattered and streaked across him and he inhaled back to life, the air forcing its way into his lungs.

He struggled up into consciousness, rolling over onto his elbows, panting for breath against the smell of stale puddled water. When he raised his head he could see the Cyberman lying inert next to him; Ianto was standing a few feet away, stun gun in his left hand, eyes distant. Jack pushed himself to his knees, wiping mud off his hands. He rocked back, a little unsteady, then used the momentum to get himself to his feet.

"I thought it killed you," Ianto said, not looking away from the Cyberman.

"Jeez, so did I," Jack agreed, subtly flexing his shoulder. Relocated. Good. "What happened?"

"It..." Ianto stopped. "I..."

He gestured with the stun gun, bringing it up to his own head, holding it a few inches from his temple. His hand shook. Jack looked and saw a blackened mark on the metal of the Cyberman's face.

"Good work," he said. Ianto let his hand fall. The gun was still shaking in it.

Jack crouched by the Cyberman and studied the situation. Thinking was always difficult right after he died.

"Ianto," he said softly. Ianto was still staring at the Cyberman with bottomless eyes. "Come here."

Ianto looked at him, then -- looked at him liked he'd ordered him to shoot himself.

"Come here," Jack repeated, keeping his voice gentle. "It can't hurt you. I'm here. I won't let it."

Ianto took a hesitant step forward. Jack pulled his boot knife and flicked the blade open.

"And you won't hurt me," Jack continued. "You killed it, because you're stronger than them. Come here."

Another hesitant step, and he was standing beside Jack, staring down not at the Cyberman but at Jack. Jack tugged on his trouser-leg and Ianto crouched next to him. His breath was coming in short gasps.

"This is how you confirm your kill," Jack continued, prying the chestplate seal off the armor with the tip of his knife. He set the seal aside and pointed with the blade at the mass of wires beneath. "Just reach in and pull the wires out. It's dead; we're just making sure. Go on," he said, when Ianto put out a hand. He took Ianto's wrist and guided it into the circuitry. Ianto jerked sharply, as if he'd been shocked.

Jack helped him find where the wires were bundled, below the top layer, and fixed Ianto's fingers around it, withdrawing his hand.

"Pull," Jack said. "One short sharp tug. They'll come free."

Ianto's arm tensed against his, shoulder muscles bunching under the soft nap of his suit. He looked at Jack.

"Go on," Jack said. "Pull."

Ianto tugged and the wires came free; foam bubbled up to the edges of the chestplate, sinking again slowly, leaving an ugly, cream-coloured film behind.

Ianto shot to his feet, stumbling away. Jack closed his knife and put it back in its holster, standing more slowly. Ianto was leaning against a tree, puking on someone's lawn, one arm clenched against his stomach. Jack put a hand between Ianto's shoulderblades and rubbed, waiting for the heaves to subside.

When Ianto finally spat and straightened, wiping his mouth, Jack took his hand away.

"That was a person once," Ianto said, not looking at him, fingers scrabbling against the bark of the tree.

"Once. Not anymore. Now they're not trapped anymore, and the Cyberman can't hurt anyone. And you," he said, turning Ianto's face to him, "did that. You saved the world, Ianto Jones."

Ianto took a deep breath, turning away to spit onto the grass again. "You know in the cinema nobody ever pukes after saving the world," he said.

Jack grinned. "Come on. There's water in the car. Hey, tell me the truth," he added, as they walked. Ianto looked hunted.

"About what?" he asked.

Jack ran a hand over his head, hearing static crackle. "How's my hair?"

***

They got the Cyberman off the street quickly, as quickly as they could; Ianto wouldn't touch it with his bare hands, but he found a pair of latex gloves in the medical kit and between the two of them they hefted the body and tumbled it into the boot. Ianto called in to the Hub to inform them they were on their way back, then followed Jack down to the Quay in his car.

Owen and Tosh were both eager to get their hands on it, so he didn't actually have to get it inside himself, and Ianto didn't have to help. Tosh was thrilled that the laser had worked, and more than a little annoyed that Jack had thrown it aside when he was done with it, damaging several of the components. He took her scolding with sheepish good grace, aided by a cup of coffee Ianto silently offered him, and then went to get a report on the Noothi Incident from Owen, who had sent Gwen home for the day.

By the time he was done with that, not to mention mediating who got first crack at the Cyberman, Ianto was upstairs, paying for a lunch order; Jack caught him in the Tourist Office and took the box of food out of his hands, placing it on the counter.

"Food'll get cold," Ianto said.

"I hear man has invented fire," Jack told him. "And microwaves."

Ianto put his hands on his hips, a little defiant. "So...?"

"Are you okay?" Jack asked. "I mean, puking aside, are you getting through this? You need to take a day?"

Ianto shook his head. "I'm fine, Jack."

Jack stepped in close, blocking him from retrieving the food.

"Sometimes it feels good," he said in a low voice, and Ianto looked up at his face. "Knowing you have that power. Or...sometimes all that happens is you feel like you're killing her all over again."

"How do you know?" Ianto asked.

Jack gave him a sharklike grin. "I've been killing things for a long time. So which was it, Ianto?"

Ianto moved forward, into Jack, one arm going around to gather up the food. Jack tensed, smelled wet asphalt and aftershave.

"I don't have to tell you," Ianto said quietly, and turned away.

Jack let him go, pleased.

***

Jack insisted that they destroy the Cyberman. Tosh protested, but he'd let her study the components, which was dangerous enough. He noticed Owen taking her aside later to remind her of what they'd seen in London, the wreckage of Canary Wharf; he also noticed that Ianto wouldn't go near her desk or Owen's as long as the Cyberman was still scattered in pieces there. Tosh did seem glad once they'd thrown it all into the incinerator and Ianto was willing to bring coffee to her again instead of making her fetch it from his workbench.

When it was done, ingots of metal mixed in with ash and chips of bone and teeth in the incinerator bin, Jack emptied it into a box and filed it away in the morgue with the other "shelf-stable" remains, box on box of ashes, sealed containers and preserved specimens.

After the Cyberman incident, Ianto seemed better. Not perfect, but then who was in this job? Shadows still lurked in his eyes sometimes, but generally they could be dispersed easily. A smile from Gwen in thanks for a sandwich, a quip from Jack or Tosh, verbal sparring with Owen, satisfaction in the work -- his shooting improved, and he had an aptitude for handling witnesses and subtly administering Retcon where necessary, which got him into the field more often. If he had bad days, they weren't nearly so bad as they had been. Jack began to detect in Ianto a burgeoning sense of humour, even if it was so dry it practically rattled.

Then came Suzie, with her rusty blood wall-paintings by proxy and her traps within traps, her return to life, the edges of the hole in the back of her head waggling every time she spoke. Everyone reacted differently to Suzie: Tosh avoided her, Gwen pitied her, Owen studied her like an insect pinned to a board, and Ianto...as far as Jack could tell, Ianto ignored her. He kept time, made coffee, and when Suzie's little trap locked the Hub down he turned into a _technological goddamn genius_. 

So Jack was left to be the one to kill her, because apparently all other attitudes towards Suzie had been spoken for.

Jack had certain political matters to attend to, in the wake of Suzie's death (take three). He had to sweet-talk the port authority into ignoring the gunplay on the pier, for a start. Trusting Owen to get Gwen and the body back safely, he picked up flowers to deliver to Kathy Swanson and endured her fresh mockery with a good-natured smile, grateful she'd at least helped him get out of lockdown. By the time he got back to the Hub, Gwen looked healthy again, and he supposed he should stop and talk to her, but she was sitting with Owen and Tosh, and that meant Suzie's body was either unattended --

Or Ianto had it, already bagged and laid out, waiting in a cold-storage drawer. In his dark suit, with a clipboard in one hand, he looked like a young undertaker's apprentice. Which, Jack supposed, in some ways was not inaccurate.

He knew Ianto could partition death away. Jack could do it himself. Most people who worked for Torchwood could, or they didn't work for Torchwood for very long. Ianto, with his forcibly tidy brain, probably found it easy, and probably hated how easy he found it.

"If you're interested," Ianto said, while Jack contemplated mortality and his lack thereof, "I've still got that stopwatch."

Jack glanced at him, puzzled.

"So?" he prompted.

"Well, think about it," Ianto said, and smiled, and Jack felt a creeping horror in his belly. "Lots of things you can do with a stopwatch."

By god, if Ianto leaned across Suzie's _corpse_ to kiss him....

But looking at Ianto, studying his face -- his gaze was clear, and the lurking mischief there was tinged with real concern, real affection.

Jack smiled back, but he wasn't quite sure yet. "Oh, yeah. I can think of a few."

A response, and a dare; if Ianto balked now --

"There's quite a list," Ianto said.

Oh...clever, broken Ianto.

"I'll send the others home early," Jack said. "See you in my office in ten."

Ianto put them both on the clock with a smartass remark and a flick of the stopwatch's button. Jack walked away with uncharacteristic nervousness in his step, even if he felt miles better than he had when he'd slunk down here to see Suzie's body, to be sure she was dead.

Ten minutes was a good plan. Ten minutes gave Ianto time to realise what he was doing, if this was conditioning; if it wasn't, it still gave him time to change his mind if he wanted.

Ianto, in return, gave him a chilling reminder that at least one person in the Hub was keeping track of how many evil alien death gloves they had, and then left him to brood on it for ten minutes (less three or four for convincing the others to go home). Still, there were pleasant things to brood on as well.

"You know," Jack said, when Ianto came up to his office twelve minutes later (late, tsk tsk), "I've been sitting here listing off all the erotic things you could do with a stopwatch. I'm a pretty imaginative guy, and the list is still actually kinda limited."

Ianto hung up his suit-jacket on the rack next to Jack's greatcoat and turned to regard him cautiously.

"And that leads me to believe that it takes a special kind of mind to invoke timepieces in a sexual proposition," Jack continued. "That's not something a person comes up with unless they're really thinking hard about it. So I think, yes, this -- is you, is it?"

Ianto's lips tilted upwards. "Yes."

"You seem sure of yourself. You want this, Ianto?" Jack asked. Ianto came forward, leaning on a corner of the desk, crossing his arms and regarding Jack evenly.

"I'm not who I was," he said, more in the tone of a confessing sinner than a potential lover. "I used to be...messy. I used to be loud. I used to like different things, feel different things. She left things in me that won't go away. I have to live with that, no matter how strong I am. I wondered if you were part of it."

"And?" Jack prompted.

"And I decided she saw something that was already there," Ianto said. "I mightn't have done it -- flirted, or whatever -- if I hadn't been made to. Doesn't mean I mightn't have considered it. And now I choose it. I own it."

"You mean me," Jack said, his voice low. Ianto smiled.

"Has anyone ever owned you, Jack?" he asked. Jack didn't answer; there were two people who might have owned him, once, but they weren't here and Ianto was. Instead he slid a hand up Ianto's thigh, toyed with his belt-buckle, hooked his fingers in the slim chain of the stopwatch hanging across his waistcoat, luxuriating in finally being allowed to _touch_.

He considered carefully just how to go about this. On the one hand, the possibilities of the stopwatch; on the other, the wisest road to take with a young, wary, unpredictable man, inexperienced with other men, whose last relationship had ended in a fair amount of murder.

But really, in the end, it was up to Ianto, wasn't it?

"You know what's awkward?" Jack said. "Sex in a camp bed."

"I can't imagine your desk is more forgiving," Ianto replied.

"The Hub is remarkably uncomfortable." Jack considered matters. "I should get some divans in here or something."

"Well, you've seen my bedroom," Ianto pointed out. "You bought the bed."

Jack looked up at him. "Would you really?" he murmured to himself.

"Really what?" Ianto asked.

Jack shook his head. "Nothing," he lied, because he suspected even this new self-possessed Ianto was not prepared to face certain truths. Jack was fairly confident Ianto had never been with a man, which was not really that big a problem, but he knew Ianto had never shared that house, that bed, with anyone else. Jack had been an occasional visitor, a fix-it man at best. Ianto might want to own this flirtation, but the intimacy of it went two ways. He could not have Jack without letting Jack in. Letting Jack into his house as a mark of that might not be as easy as Ianto thought.

But Ianto had gone to Flat Holm, had worked to break the surface after being buried for so long, had been able to call for help when help was needed, had killed his demon. So perhaps this was one more test. Devised and executed by its sole subject.

Jack flattened his palm against Ianto's stomach, over the chain and the waistcoat.

"Do you actually want a time-challenge on this?" he asked. Ianto shook his head. "Leave the stopwatch. Get your coat."

***

"Is it safe to leave the Hub empty?" Ianto asked, as they stepped out into the chilly Cardiff evening.

"Too late now if it isn't," Jack said cheerfully, waving a hand at a cab waiting in front of the Millennium Centre -- the head of a line of cabs, anticipating the opera letting out. He flashed his lights and Jack hurried across the Plass, glancing back at Ianto, who looked as if his concern was not entirely laid to rest. "We leave the Hub empty all the time," he added, opening the door of the cab. "In."

Ianto gave him a sardonic look. "Yes, sir."

Jack climbed in after him as Ianto was giving his address to the driver, who grunted his affirmative and pulled away from the kerb. Ianto was watching Jack, pale face illuminated by the streetlights they passed under. There was a certain calm about his expression, but his eyes were cautious and he looked very young. Jack traced a hand along his forearm, thumb sliding into the slight crease of his elbow, and smiled. All the thwarted anticipation of months ago rushed back, this time untinged by guilt ( _she made him do that_ ) or fear ( _does he want this_ ) or shame ( _how did I not see_ ).

Ianto's eyes flicked down to his hand, briefly, then back up to his face; to his mouth, in specific. Jack licked his lower lip. Ah, not so pale now; Ianto was blushing.

Jack paid for the cab when it jerked to a stop in front of Ianto's house, caught up to Ianto inside the gate; he was leaning against his front door, forehead touching the dark wood, one hand on the key which was in the deadbolt lock. Jack stood on the step below him, patient.

"Second thoughts?" he asked. He half expected Ianto to startle, but he didn't move.

"Wondering if I've left anything embarrassing lying out," Ianto said.

Jack humoured him. "Sex toys, dirty underwear, or trashy novels?" he asked. "Because frankly I could make sure any of those are more fun than a stopwatch -- "

"Oh my god, get off the street," Ianto said in horror, turning back to him and hip-checking the door open. He pulled Jack inside by the arm and Jack went enthusiastically, kicking the door closed behind him. Ianto was slipping his shoes off, hanging up his coat -- and he turned to Jack, hands out, to take his coat from him as well. Jack stepped up into his space, grinning, and shrugged the coat off his shoulders. Ianto had to either reach around him for it or let it fall.

"Now that I'm off the street," he said, as Ianto caught the coat, freezing at their proximity, "What _are_ you going to do with me?"

Ianto let one hand slip away, hanging up the coat with the other, not turning, not backing down.

Oh, this was going to be _fun._

Ianto brought his hand up again slowly, smoothing his thumb against one of Jack's braces before tucking his fingers under and running them down again. Jack let him explore, content for now to watch the concentration on Ianto's face blossom slowly into understanding. Ianto tugged; Jack let his shoulder drop, and the strap fell. He pulled the other one off himself, so that they hung down around his hips. He caught Ianto's eye, smiled reassuringly, and slid his fingers up to the knot of Ianto's necktie.

"Never done this before," Ianto said, lifting his chin so Jack could tug the fabric loose. Looking up, looking away, as if he weren't a part of this somehow.

"Don't have to do it now," Jack said, tucking the tie between his fingers, then dropping it on the floor. There; they had managed to get rid of one accessory each. Jack supposed it was a start. "Whatever you want, Ianto."

"Shoes," Ianto said, and Jack frowned at him.

"What?" he asked. Shoes weren't usually his thing, but he was game to try it if --

Ianto tapped his already bare toe against Jack's boot. "Off."

Jack laughed -- only Ianto -- and crouched to unlace his boots. It occurred to him, as he worked on the second one, that he was in an intriguing position, and he was about to observe on this to Ianto, when he realised he was alone in the foyer.

Ianto was already in the bedroom, belt hung neatly on a rack, trousers folded across a chair, down to his shirt (unbuttoned) and briefs (very tight). He turned to Jack, who opened his mouth for a smart remark about efficiency.

He was inhaling when Ianto stepped forward and kissed him intently, all tongue and teeth. He kissed almost sidelong, like he was trying to hide his face, and Jack carefully cupped his head with one hand, enjoying the short spiky hair at the back of his neck.

"Easy," he said, pulling back a little. "Easy, slow down."

"Why?" Ianto asked, nipping his skin just below his jaw.

"Because..." Jack pulled back again, moving his hand around to hold Ianto's face, to stop him. "...because you kiss like you don't want to lose your nerve."

Ianto's mouth was slightly open, lips damp, and his eyes were wide.

"Jack," he said, and something in his tone made Jack realise he was containing impatience. "I haven't had sex in almost a year."

Bits of Jack's brain ceased functioning. Which was actually sort of nice.

"Oh," he said.

"I kiss," Ianto stepped in again, pausing to press a demonstrative kiss to Jack's lips, "like I'm trying to get you out of your pants as fast as possible."

Jack gave in and pushed back, leaning into the kiss, hands fumbling with Ianto's at his belt-buckle before he gave up and let Ianto do it, sliding his fingers up Ianto's chest instead. So responsive -- he got a shudder and a moan for his effort, and a brief brush of contact against his cock when Ianto hooked his thumbs in Jack's trousers and pulled them and his underwear down in a quick motion. Jack reached for his shirts and tugged both up and off without bothering with the buttons; Ianto shrugged out of his own, which gave Jack just enough time to swing around him and fall back on the bed. The bed he had bought, in the house Ianto liked, a house with a crooked sofa and a mess in the kitchen.

Ianto stripped off his underwear on his way to the bed, reaching for Jack, allowing himself to be pulled on top of him. He flinched back a little when Jack's cock brushed his thigh -- well, that was twenty-first-century men for you. Jack let him ease down again, exploring shoulders, biceps, chest with his hands, until Ianto bent his head and kissed him.

"Can I touch you?" Jack asked in Ianto's ear, drawing his knees up, pulling Ianto's hips against his. Ianto nodded against his cheek, leaning a little to one side. Jack splayed his fingers on Ianto's waist, slid them around to his stomach, curled them against the skin there. Tense; he rubbed slowly, just with his fingertips, until Ianto exhaled and bit down gently on his throat again. Much better, and when he ran his fingers lower, exploring, Ianto was no longer tense.

Hard though, yes, he was hard, lovely to feel, moaning softly when Jack closed his fingers around his cock and squeezed. Louder when Jack flicked his wrist -- a sort of needy, pleading noise. One of Ianto's hands found his arm, fingernails digging in. Jack kissed his temple, the nearest place he could reach, and grinned. Slowly, he tipped his body so that Ianto's turned against his, and when he let go, Ianto bucked against his cock. This time the noise was just as desperate, if a little more surprised.

"Just like this," he said, rolling his hips. Ianto's whole body jerked. Ianto drew himself up a little, propped on one elbow so he could kiss Jack's mouth, and Jack let him be the one to move next -- well, maybe he rocked back and forth a bit, just as encouragement. Ianto twitched, experimentally, and then began to thrust. Jack moaned and grabbed for his shoulders, rising to meet him, pushing back. This was _perfect_ : being able, being _allowed_ to touch and kiss, to explore the smooth planes of Ianto's back, the lovely curve of his spine.

Ianto was quiet, his mouth mostly taken up with Jack's own mouth, his jaw, throat, shoulder, perhaps because Ianto was ashamed to show pleasure, perhaps because he just liked to kiss. Jack made enough noise for both of them, swearing, groaning, muttering encouragements, _yes, right there, harder, it's okay..._

Ianto went still and tense for just a second and he muffled a cry in Jack's skin as he came, hips stuttering, messy and breathless. Jack pulled him back (perhaps a little roughly, but Ianto didn't seem to mind) so he could see his face, his eyes -- and came himself, the orgasm taking him by surprise and arching his back up off the bed.

He collapsed again, panting, and let Ianto drop down into his arms. Definitely no tension now; he was a loose, dead weight, breath warm on Jack's neck.

He thought he heard a muffled "Sorry."

Jack burst out laughing.

"Sorry?" he said, manhandling Ianto off to one side so they could face each other. " _Sorry?_ "

Ianto cut his eyes away. "Was sort of...fast," he mumbled.

"So?" Jack asked. "We both were."

"Yeah, but..." Ianto touched his chest, hand moving slowly, stopping short at the sticky mess on Jack's stomach. Jack deliberately brushed his hand downwards, lifted one of Ianto's smeared fingers, and sucked it into his mouth. Ianto's breath caught.

"But?" Jack asked, when he was done very thoroughly cleaning Ianto's fingers.

"I wanted -- "

Jack waited patiently.

"It's all right, isn't it, about today I mean," Ianto said, which seemed like a random tangent from someone who'd been about to tell Jack he wanted to fuck him (or wanted to be fucked by him; Jack couldn't quite be sure yet, but he was up for either proposition).

"Today?" Jack asked.

"With Suzie and all, you looked -- " Ianto shrugged against the blanket. "You looked...dark. Like the bad days."

Jack nodded. "Do I look that way now?"

Ianto's whole face changed when he smiled. Jack liked to see it, didn't see nearly enough of it. "No," he admitted.

"Then what's the problem?" Jack asked. "Aside from getting a little sticky," he added. Ianto gave him another quick smile and rolled off the bed.

"Easily cleaned," he called, walking to the bathroom. Jack studied his ass. It was a very nice ass and hopefully Ianto would not be squeamish about it, because Jack had big plans for that ass. Ianto returned, cleaner than he had been, carrying a washcloth.

Jack had big plans for Ianto's _all over_ , actually. Ianto seemed to sense it, too; the blush that formed as he handed Jack the washcloth went from cheeks to chest. Jack wiped himself down and showed off a little, and Ianto's blush deepened.

"No use worrying about it now," Jack told him with a grin. "Or standing there," he pointed at Ianto, "when you could be here." He pointed to the bed. Ianto sat down on the edge of the bed, fingers curling into the blanket, head bowed. Jack looked up at him, perplexed.

"Can I ask you something?" Ianto said. "A favour."

"Go again?" Jack replied hopefully. Ianto laughed a little.

"No," he said. "Not for a bit, anyway. I..." he looked up at the ceiling. "Jack, you have to stop checking me."

"Checking you?" Jack pushed himself up on his elbows, curious.

"You have to stop asking. About the conditioning. You have to stop looking at me to make sure I'm all there," Ianto said. He swallowed, and Jack admired the bob of his Adam's apple. "If you can. I need to know _someone_ trusts me to be who I am."

Jack considered it. Tactically, it was dangerous, but he couldn't very well spend the rest of Ianto's life forcing him to undergo that scrutiny.

"I am...releasing you from that responsibility," Ianto added, turning finally to look at him.

_Release._ Jack felt like something had lifted off his chest, a crouching suspicious bird of prey he hadn't even known had been there. He put out a hand and pulled Ianto down to lie next to him, facing him.

"Can you?" Ianto asked. "Please?"

Jack nodded and traced a fingertip along Ianto's cheek. "I can do that. Might take some time to remember not to. It's a habit."

"I'm not asking for perfection."

"Are you implying I'm not perfect?" Jack asked. Ianto smiled and pressed his forehead against Jack's.

"But you can try?" he asked. Jack nodded again.

"I can try," he said. He felt exhausted, like he could sleep for a week.

"Thank you," Ianto said, as Jack's eyes closed. God, he was so tired. Ianto said something else, but he hardly heard. It was warm here, and there was another body tangled up with his, and Ianto was safe, he'd survived -- one lost man found and bound back to him again, a salvaged wreck among Jack's many monumental screwups.

Jack fell asleep with his hand on Ianto's neck, holding him gently in place, foreheads still touching.


	6. Author's Notes

While posting Condition Of Release, I had some requests to discuss the Classic Who canon that I drew on in this story. I also wanted to talk a little bit about the mytharc of the Cybermen, so if you'd like the full impact of my nattering you can read on, but if you scroll to the bottom you can find a plain set of links to articles about the canonical sources I used.

The Cybermen, after forty-seven years of Doctor Who canon, have a complex and convoluted history which it's really probably best not to think about too carefully. Probably the wisest course is to consider "Cyberman" a recurring theme rather than an actual alien race you can write a history on. There are many distinct types of Cyberman from a variety of origins; the Pete's World Cybermen from New Who, for example, are an acknowledged metaphysical echo of the Classic Who Cybermen rather than their direct descendants. The Cyberwoman featured in Torchwood is unique as a partially-converted human, though the idea has roots in "Tomb Of The Cybermen", where a character named Toberman is partially-converted with a single implant in order to bring him under Cyberman control.

Toberman and "Tomb Of The Cybermen" lay the conceptual foundation for Condition Of Release.

That's Toberman being brainwhammied by the big head honcho Cyber ~~pope~~ controller. Because the idea first occurred to me while watching "Tomb of the Cyberman", I opened in chapter one with Jack interviewing Victoria Waterfield, a Companion of the Second Doctor and a witness to the events in that story.

The Doctor picked her up in the 19th century, whilst already travelling with 17th century highland soldier-boy Jamie McCrimmon, but eventually left Victoria with a 20th-century family after she had a crisis of identity. She was initially a strong character, though as her arc progressed she grew steadily weaker, devolving into the Screaming Female -- literally, in her last serial, her screams are what defeat the Big Bad. I've tried to play with those conceptions of her a bit, showing her through the Brigadier's eyes ("rather useless") and Jack's ("the strength she could use to defy him").

The idea of Cyberman mind control is cemented in two Second Doctor serials, "The Wheel In Space" and "The Invasion", where it's basically accepted that Cybermen can telepathically control humans, except those humans protected by a metal "patch" at the back of the neck that blocks Cyberman transmissions (hilariously, this is essentially tape and tinfoil). "The Wheel In Space" is something I would have liked to have referenced, but all the direct witnesses come from the (presumably very late) 21st century and could not have encountered Jack prior to Ianto's tenure at Torchwood. The two people who could have told him about it, the Doctor's Companions at the time, were never separated from him long enough and at the right time for Jack to legitimately find them. They were eventually returned to their own times (Zoe to the 21st, Jamie to the 17th) with their memories almost fully wiped.

Jamie and Zoe look badass in spacesuits.

In Chapter Two, because I was dealing with the very beginnings of Ianto's attempts to break conditioning, I wanted to retell the story of Lieutenant Carstairs, who met the Second Doctor on a battlefield in "The War Games". Carstairs believed that they were on Earth in 1917, engaged in World War I; in actuality, he and thousands of other soldiers from a dozen historical wars had been transplanted to another planet. Here, they were divided into "zones" and conditioned to believe they were on Earth, so they continued to fight. This was done by an alien race known as the War Lords in order to find the strongest possible soldiers to train as a galactic invasion force. Carstairs is one of the few soldiers who, with the Doctor's help, actively broke his implanted conditioning (as opposed to simply being immune to it as a few others were).

Anyway, in order to fully overthrow the War Lords, the Doctor had to summon the Time Lords, who stepped in, cleaned up, and sent the soldiers back to their Earthly battlefields. This seems like kind of a douchebag thing to do, but it is also a great commentary on how easily we accept brutality if we're inflicting it on each other, where we wouldn't if someone else was making us do it.

"The War Games" is a really excellent serial, though it does suffer some common maladies of early Who -- awkward racial and gender stereotypes, now-and-then line flubs, and occasional hilariously bad special effects. It's not a good place to _start_ watching Classic Who, but with a little grounding it's an excellent serial to really dig into, both for the wartime metaphors and for the great story. Carstairs is a marvelous character, and frankly I would have killed to see him as a Companion. He's a handsome bloke, who reminds us of another handsome bloke...

In the same chapter, Jack also references Torchwood's research materials on a variety of subjects. Some names will be familiar to New Who viewers: The Hartigan Excavation is a theoretical excavation that Torchwood London could have carried out, studying the damage done to London by the giant steampunk Cyberman controlled by Miss Hartigan in the Tenth Doctor special "The Next Doctor". The Van Statten authentication is meant to be a document concerning the Cyberman helmet seen by the Ninth Doctor in Henry Van Statten's museum in "Dalek".

The Snowcap Base black box recordings that Jack has on file would have been relatively recent acquisitions of his; they refer to "The Tenth Planet", a First Doctor episode set in 1986. "The Tenth Planet" was the first serial to feature the Cybermen, where they invaded an astronomy station in Antarctica and were consequently routed by the First Doctor, with Companions Ben Jackson and Polly Wright. It's not a great serial in and of itself, but the Tenth Planet Cybermen are about a million times scarier than any other Cybermen I've encountered so far.

That Cyberman doesn't look too frightening, but have a good look at the blacked-out eyes, the human hands, and the open mouth. Now picture that mouth not moving as words come out. Yeah. (That's Polly there on the right.)

Ben and Polly likely flew under Jack's radar for a long time, given that they left the TARDIS after their travels _slightly before the date they entered it_. By the time Jack acquired the recordings, locating two random Londoners named Ben and Polly would have been quite difficult. Incidentally, Ben Jackson bears a somewhat uncanny resemblance to Owen Harper. I'm pretty sure there's some timey-wimey baby-daddying going on there.

The other two files Jack references, "The autopsy file on Vaughn" and "The Invasion Debriefing", both relate to "The Invasion", a Second Doctor serial set in London. This ties into chapter four's interview with the Brigadier, which also concerns "The Invasion".

The ostensible human villain of the serial is Tobias Vaugh, a wealthy microchip manufacturer and pawn of the Cybermen. Hello, ~~Steve Jobs~~ ~~Bill Gates~~ Tobias Vaughn!

The Cybermen use Vaughn's ubiquitous technology (which is actually rather prophetic of our current state of affairs) to knock out anyone within listening distance of any machine that had a Vaughn microchip in it. This accomplished, they intended to invade by rising out of the sewers where they'd been hiding _and_ by attacking from a spaceship orbiting Earth. They were then pwned hard by the Second Doctor, the Brigadier, some Russians, and a turncoat Vaughn, which just goes to show.

This story is recounted to Jack unofficially by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the leaders if not the ultimate authority at UNIT in the early seventies (or eighties, depending on how you date the UNIT era, but that's a complex research thesis and we won't get into it). At the point Jack interviews him, we are firmly in the late sixties; the Brigadier has met the Second Doctor twice, once battling robot Yetis in "The Web Of Fear" and once battling the Cybermen in "The Invasion". He will encounter the Third Doctor soon enough, and become a series regular while the Third Doctor is stranded on Earth and employed by UNIT.

It should be noted that the Brig has had encounters and adventures with every iteration of the Doctor except the Ninth; even if you only count TV canon, he's still met the first seven. He is one of the longest-running characters on television, recently appearing on the Sarah Jane Adventures, and Nicholas Courtney has played the Brigadier longer than nine actors _combined_ have played the Doctor. Both Courtney and the Brig are made of awesome.

Lookin' fine, Brigadier.

Unlike the first four chapters, chapter five has no "direct witness" statement, but Jack does remark at one point that their research on the Cybermen goes back to the 1940s. This references a tie-in novel, "Illegal Alien", in which the Seventh Doctor and Ace encounter the Cybermen during WWII. This is the first record I could find of the Cybermen after 1851, but I've not read it.

I do admit, after loading you up with all this information, that my accounting of the Cybermen is incomplete. I've only seen the first three Doctors and the latest three; there's a gap in my knowledge that spans from Four to Eight. I was pretty pleased with what I had, though, and how I've worked it in; I like that the story had a faintly noir-ish air to it, since I wanted to recall the earliest Classic Who episodes that inspired it. Some of my description, especially of the old film and audio reels, draws directly from the quality of the episodes I watched. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**For more information on the episodes directly influencing Condition of Release:**

Jack and Victoria's interview: **["Tomb Of The Cybermen"](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Cybermen)**  
Jack and Carstairs's interview: **["The War Games"](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_War_Games)**  
Jack and the Brigadier's interview: **["The Invasion"](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Invasion)**  
The Hartigan Excavation: **["The Next Doctor"](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Next_Doctor)**  
The Van Statten Authentication: **["Dalek"](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dalek_\(TV_story\))**  
The Vaughn autopsy and the Invasion Debriefing: **["The Invasion"](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Invasion)**  
The Snowcap Base black box recording: **["The Tenth Planet"](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Tenth_Planet)**


End file.
